Climategate 3.0 has occurred – the password has been released

This post will be a top “sticky” post for some time, new essays will appear below this one. UPDATES as emails are noted, will appear below. – Anthony

UPDATE8 3/19/13: Jeff Condonhas received legal notice from UEA warning him not to release the password. So far, I have not seen any such notice. For those who demand it be released, take note. – Anthony

A number of climate skeptic bloggers (myself included) have received this message yesterday. While I had planned to defer announcing this until a reasonable scan could be completed, some other bloggers have let the cat out of the bag. I provide this introductory email sent by “FOIA” without editing or comment. I do have one email, which I found quite humorous, which I will add at the end so that our friends know that this is valid. Update – the first email I posted apparently was part of an earlier release (though I had not seen it, there are a number of duplicates in the all.zip file) so I have added a second one.

I hope one day that FOIA’s true identity can be revealed so that he can be properly applauded and rewarded for his signal service to mankind. He is a true hero, who deserves to go on the same roll of honour as Norman Borlaug, Julian Simon and Steve McIntyre: people who put truth, integrity and the human race first and ideology second. Unlike the misanthropic greenies who do exactly the opposite.

Update4: An email showing some insight on the beginning of the use of the word “denier” along with some demonstrated coziness with media activists.

Update5: Mike Mann rages and releases the attack dogs Monbiot, Romm, Media Matters and others in response to a perfectly valid and polite inquiry from the Wall Street Journal, suggesting a smear before the reporter even write the story.

Update6: From Junkscience.com, who spotted this exchange: Wigley accuses IPCC and lead authors of ‘dishonest presentations of model results’; Accuses Mann of deception; Mann admits

It’s time to tie up loose ends and dispel some of the speculation surrounding the Climategate affair.

Indeed, it’s singular “I” this time. After certain career developments I can no longer use the papal plural ;-)

If this email seems slightly disjointed it’s probably my linguistic background and the problem of trying to address both the wider audience (I expect this will be partially reproduced sooner or later) and the email recipients (whom I haven’t decided yet on).

The “all.7z” password is [redacted]

DO NOT PUBLISH THE PASSWORD. Quote other parts if you like.

Releasing the encrypted archive was a mere practicality. I didn’t want to keep the emails lying around.

I prepared CG1 & 2 alone. Even skimming through all 220.000 emails would have taken several more months of work in an increasingly unfavorable environment.

Dumping them all into the public domain would be the last resort. Majority of the emails are irrelevant, some of them probably sensitive and socially damaging.

To get the remaining scientifically (or otherwise) relevant emails out, I ask you to pass this on to any motivated and responsible individuals who could volunteer some time to sift through the material for eventual release.

I’m not entirely comfortable sending the password around unsolicited, but haven’t got better ideas at the moment. If you feel this makes you seemingly “complicit” in a way you don’t like, don’t take action.

I don’t expect these remaining emails to hold big surprises. Yet it’s possible that the most important pieces are among them. Nobody on the planet has held the archive in plaintext since CG2.

That’s right; no conspiracy, no paid hackers, no Big Oil. The Republicans didn’t plot this. USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere.

If someone is still wondering why anyone would take these risks, or sees only a breach of privacy here, a few words…

The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to garner my trust in the state of climate science — on the contrary. I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact.

Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy\career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern.

It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.

Most would agree that climate science has already directed where humanity puts its capability, innovation, mental and material “might”. The scale will grow ever grander in the coming decades if things go according to script. We’re dealing with $trillions and potentially drastic influence on practically everyone.

Wealth of the surrounding society tends to draw the major brushstrokes of a newborn’s future life. It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.

We can’t pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it’s not away from something and someone else.

If the economy of a region, a country, a city, etc. deteriorates, what happens among the poorest? Does that usually improve their prospects? No, they will take the hardest hit. No amount of magical climate thinking can turn this one upside-down.

It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.

Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.

Conversely, a “game-changer” could have a beneficial effect encompassing a similar scope.

If I had a chance to accomplish even a fraction of that, I’d have to try. I couldn’t morally afford inaction. Even if I risked everything, would never get personal compensation, and could probably never talk about it with anyone.

I took what I deemed the most defensible course of action, and would do it again (although with slight alterations — trying to publish something truthful on RealClimate was clearly too grandiose of a plan ;-).

Even if I have it all wrong and these scientists had some good reason to mislead us (instead of making a strong case with real data) I think disseminating the truth is still the safest bet by far.

Big thanks to Steve and Anthony and many others. My contribution would never have happened without your work (whether or not you agree with the views stated).

Oh, one more thing. I was surprised to learn from a “progressive” blog, corroborated by a renowned “scientist”, that the releases were part of a coordinated campaign receiving vast amounts of secret funding from shady energy industry groups.

I wasn’t aware of the arrangement but warmly welcome their decision to support my project. For that end I opened a bitcoin address: 1HHQ36qbsgGZWLPmiUjYHxQUPJ6EQXVJFS.

More seriously speaking, I accept, with gratitude, modest donations to support The (other) Cause. The address can also serve as a digital signature to ward off those identity thefts which are part of climate scientists’ repertoire of tricks these days.

Keep on the good work. I won’t be able to use this email address for long so if you reply, I can’t guarantee reading or answering. I will several batches, to anyone I can think of.

Mat,
The papers looks very good. Hope these comments aren’t too late…. I
don’t think I need to see it again.

Simon

Response to reviewers

I couldn’t read your letter — PS files as attachments seem to get
munged by our firewall/email scanner so I’ve just looked at the paper
to see if I think you’ve dealt with the reviewers comments.

Editors comments:

3) Don’t think you have dealt with the enhanced multi-decadal
variability in the paper.

Reviewer B.

1) Didn’t see a justification for use of tree-rings and not using ice
cores — the obvious one is that ice cores are no good — see Jones et
al, 1998.

2) No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!)

3) No justification in the paper for the 9 regions. I think there is
justification in the JGR Briffa paper.

4) That is a good point — I would strongly suspect that the control has
a lot less variance than the observations over the last century —
not the ALL run though!

5) No response to this in the paper. I suspect we are doing better
stats than all the rest though!

Specific Questions/comments

1) That is a good point: How about (though a bit germanic)
“Comparison of simulated northern hemisphere variability with
paleo-temperature …”

Didn’t see that you had dealt with points 5 and 6.

Ditto for point 11.

Figures.

2-4 seem to be much as submitted!

Figs 5-8 — do you want to use colour? It would cost!

Ref C.

Don’t seem to have dealt with point a) and it is quite an important
point as well!

Point b is a reasonable point which I think you go some way to dealing
with. I suggest you stress on page 20 the “exploratory” nature of our
analysis. I am just about to start such a run once I have sorted out
the orbital forcings and how to calculate their radiative forcings.

Point c — not sure what the referee is saying here!

Comments on the MS.

Page 9 “pith” means
Same sentence I think you need to add that they are grouped by
species as well (the rest of the para implies that is what is
done).

Last sentence of penultimate para: stress that decadal to century
scale variability is what we are interested mainly because of its
importance in deciding if recent climate change is anthropogenic or
natural.

Thanks for your message. I’m forwarding this to Ray and Malcolm to reply to
some of your statements below,

mike

At 10:59 AM 5/2/01 -0400, Edward Cook wrote:
> >Ed,
> >
> >heard some rumor that you are involved in a non-hockey stick
> >reconstruction
> >of northern hemisphere temperatures. I am very intrigued to learn about
> >this – are these results suggesting the so called Medieval Warm Period
> >may
> >be warmer than the early/mid 20th century?
> >
> >any enlightenment on this would be most appreciated, Tom
> >
> >
> >
> >Thomas J. Crowley
> >Dept. of Oceanography
> >Texas A&M University
> >College Station, TX 77843-3146
> >979-xxxxxxx
> >979-xxxxxxx
> >979-xxxxxxx
>
>Hi Tom,
>
>As rumors often are, the one you heard is not entirely accurate. So, I will
>take some time here to explain for you, Mike, and others exactly what was
>done and what the motivation was, in an effort to hopefully avoid any
>misunderstanding. I especially want to avoid any suggestion that this work
>was being done to specifically counter or refute the “hockey stick”.
>However, it does suggest (as do other results from your EBM, Peck’s work,
>the borehole data, and Briffa and Jones large-scale proxy estimates) that
>there are unresolved (I think) inconsistencies in the low-frequency aspects
>of the hockey stick series compared to other results. So, any comparisons
>with the hockey stick were made with that spirit in mind.
>
>What Jan Esper and I are working on (mostly Jan with me as second author)
>is a paper that was in response to Broecker’s Science Perspectives piece on
>the Medieval Warm Period. Specifically, we took strong exception to his
>claim that tree rings are incapable of preserving century time scale
>temperature variability. Of course, if Broecker had read the literature, he
>would have known that what he claimed was inaccurate. Be that as it may,
>Jan had been working on a project, as part of his post-doc here, to look at
>large-scale, low-frequency patterns of tree growth and climate in long
>tree-ring records provided to him by Fritz Schweingruber. With the addition
>of a couple of sites from foxtail pine in California, Jan amassed a
>collection of 14 tree-ring sites scattered somewhat uniformly over the
>30-70 degree NH latitude band, with most extending back 1000-1200 years.
>All of the sites are from temperature-sensitive locations (i.e. high
>elevation or high northern latitude. It is, as far as I know, the largest,
>longest, and most spatially representative set of such
>temperature-sensitive tree-ring data yet put together for the NH
>extra-tropics.
>
>In order to preserve maximum low-frequency variance, Jan used the Regional
>Curve Standardization (RCS) method, used previously by Briffa and myself
>with great success. Only here, Jan chose to do things in a somewhat radical
>fashion. Since the replication at each site was generally insufficient to
>produce a robust RCS chronology back to, say, AD 1000, Jan pooled all of
>the original measurement series into 2 classes of growth trends: non-linear
>(~700 ring-width series) and linear (~500 ring-width series). He than
>performed independent RCS on the each of the pooled sets and produced 2 RCS
>chronologies with remarkably similar multi-decadal and centennial
>low-frequency characteristics. These chronologies are not good at
>preserving high-frquency climate information because of the scattering of
>sites and the mix of different species, but the low-frequency patterns are
>probably reflecting the same long-term changes in temperature. Jan than
>averaged the 2 RCS chronologies together to produce a single chronology
>extending back to AD 800. It has a very well defined Medieval Warm Period –
>Little Ice Age – 20th Century Warming pattern, punctuated by strong decadal
>fluctuations of inferred cold that correspond well with known histories of
>neo-glacial advance in some parts of the NH. The punctuations also appear,
>in some cases, to be related to known major volcanic eruptions.
>
>Jan originally only wanted to show this NH extra-tropical RCS chronology in
>a form scaled to millimeters of growth to show how forest productivity and
>carbon sequestration may be modified by climate variability and change over
>relatively long time scales. However, I encouraged him to compare his
>series with NH instrumental temperature data and the proxy estimates
>produced by Jones, Briffa, and Mann in order bolster the claim that his
>unorthodox method of pooling the tree-ring data was producing a record that
>was indeed related to temperatures in some sense. This he did by linearly
>rescaling his RCS chronology from mm of growth to temperature anomalies. In
>so doing, Jan demonstrated that his series, on inter-decadal time scales
>only, was well correlated to the annual NH instrumental record. This result
>agreed extremely well with those of Jones and Briffa. Of course, some of
>the same data were used by them, but probably not more than 40 percent
>(Briffa in particular), so the comparison is based on mostly, but not
>fully, independent data. The similarity indicated that Jan’s approach was
>valid for producing a useful reconstruction of multi-decadal temperature
>variability (probably weighted towards the warm-season months, but it is
>impossible to know by how much) over a larger region of the NH
>extra-tropics than that produced before by Jones and Briffa. It also
>revealed somewhat more intense cooling in the Little Ice Age that is more
>consistent with what the borehole temperatures indicate back to AD 1600.
>This result also bolsters the argument for a reasonably large-scale
>Medieval Warm Period that may not be as warm as the late 20th century, but
>is of much(?) greater significance than that produced previously.
>
>Of course, Jan also had to compare his record with the hockey stick since
>that is the most prominent and oft-cited record of NH temperatures covering
>the past 1000 years. The results were consistent with the differences shown
>by others, mainly in the century-scale of variability. Again, the Esper
>series shows a very strong, even canonical, Medieval Warm Period – Little
>Ice Age – 20th Century Warming pattern, which is largely missing from the
>hockey stick. Yet the two series agree reasonably well on inter-decadal
>timescales, even though they may not be 1:1 expressions of the same
>temperature window (i.e. annual vs. warm-season weighted). However, the
>tree-ring series used in the hockey stick are warm-season weighted as well,
>so the difference between “annual” and “warm-season weighted” is probably
>not as large as it might seem, especially before the period of instrumental
>data (e.g. pre-1700) in the hockey stick. So, they both share a significant
>degree of common interdecal temperature information (and some, but not
>much, data), but do not co-vary well on century timescales. Again, this has
>all been shown before by others using different temperature
>reconstructions, but Jan’s result is probably the most comprehensive
>expression (I believe) of extra-tropical NH temperatures back to AD 800 on
>multi-decadal and century time scales.
>
>Now back to the Broecker perspectives piece. I felt compelled to refute
>Broecker’s erroneous claim that tree rings could not preserve long-term
>temperature information. So, I organized a “Special Wally Seminar” in which
>I introduced the topic to him and the packed audience using Samuel
>Johnson’s famous “I refute it thus” statement in the form of “Jan Esper and
>I refute Broecker thus”. Jan than presented, in a very detailed and well
>espressed fashion, his story and Broecker became an instant convert. In
>other words, Wally now believes that long tree-ring records, when properly
>selected and processed, can preserve low-frequency temperature variability
>on centennial time scales. Others in the audience came away with the same
>understanding, one that we dendrochronologists always knew to be the case.
>This was the entire purpose of Jan’s work and the presentation of it to
>Wally and others. Wally had expressed some doubts about the hockey stick
>previously to me and did so again in his perspectives article. So, Jan’s
>presentation strongly re-enforced Wally’s opinion about the hockey stick,
>which he has expressed to others including several who attended a
>subsequent NOAA meeting at Lamont. I have no control over what Wally says
>and only hope that we can work together to reconcile, in a professional,
>friendly manner, the differences between the hockey stick and other proxy
>temperature records covering the past 1000 years. This I would like to do.
>
>I do think that the Medieval Warm Period was a far more significant event
>than has been recognized previously, as much because the high-resolution
>data to evaluate it had not been available before. That is much less so the
>case now. It is even showing up strongly now in long SH tree-ring series.
>However, there is still the question of how strong this event was in the
>tropics. I maintain that we do not have the proxies to tell us that now.
>The tropical ice core data are very difficult to interpret as temperature
>proxies (far worse than tree rings for sure and maybe even unrelated to
>temperatures in any simple linear sense as is often assumed), so I do not
>believe that they can be used alone as records to test for the existence of
>a Medieval Warm Period in the tropics. That being the case, there are
>really no other high-resolution records from the tropics to use, and the
>teleconnections between long extra-tropical proxies and the tropics are, I
>believe, far too tenuous and probably unstable to use to sort out this
>issue.
>
>So, at this stage I would argue that the Medieval Warm Period was probably
>a global extra-tropical event, at the very least, with warmth that was
>persistent and probably comparable to much of what we have experienced in
>the 20th century. However, I would not claim (and nor would Jan) that it
>exceeded the warmth of the late 20th century. We simply do not have the
>precision or the proxy replication to say that yet. This being said, I do
>find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event
>to be grossly premature and probably wrong. Kind of like Mark Twain’s
>commment that accounts of his death were greatly exaggerated. If, as some
>people believe, a degree of symmetry in climate exists between the
>hemispheres, which would appear to arise from the tropics, then the
>existence of a Medieval Warm Period in the extra-tropics of the NH and SH
>argues for its existence in the tropics as well. Only time and an enlarged
>suite of proxies that extend into the tropics will tell if this is true.
>
>I hope that what I have written clarifies the rumor and expresses my views
>more completely and accurately.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Ed
>
>==================================
>Dr. Edward R. Cook
>Doherty Senior Scholar
>Tree-Ring Laboratory
>Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
>Palisades, New York 10964 USA
>Phone: 1-845-xxxxxx
>Fax: 1-845-xxxxxx
>Email: drdendro@xxxxxxx
>==================================

Thanks for your message. I’m forwarding this to Ray and Malcolm to reply to
some of your statements below,

mike

At 10:59 AM 5/2/01 -0400, Edward Cook wrote:
> >Ed,
> >
> >heard some rumor that you are involved in a non-hockey stick
> >reconstruction
> >of northern hemisphere temperatures. I am very intrigued to learn about
> >this – are these results suggesting the so called Medieval Warm Period
> >may
> >be warmer than the early/mid 20th century?
> >
> >any enlightenment on this would be most appreciated, Tom
> >
> >
> >
> >Thomas J. Crowley
> >Dept. of Oceanography
> >Texas A&M University
> >College Station, TX 77843-3146
> >979-xxxxx
> >979-xxxxx
> >979-xxxxx
>
>Hi Tom,
>
>As rumors often are, the one you heard is not entirely accurate. So, I will
>take some time here to explain for you, Mike, and others exactly what was
>done and what the motivation was, in an effort to hopefully avoid any
>misunderstanding. I especially want to avoid any suggestion that this work
>was being done to specifically counter or refute the “hockey stick”.
>However, it does suggest (as do other results from your EBM, Peck’s work,
>the borehole data, and Briffa and Jones large-scale proxy estimates) that
>there are unresolved (I think) inconsistencies in the low-frequency aspects
>of the hockey stick series compared to other results. So, any comparisons
>with the hockey stick were made with that spirit in mind.
>
>What Jan Esper and I are working on (mostly Jan with me as second author)
>is a paper that was in response to Broecker’s Science Perspectives piece on
>the Medieval Warm Period. Specifically, we took strong exception to his
>claim that tree rings are incapable of preserving century time scale
>temperature variability. Of course, if Broecker had read the literature, he
>would have known that what he claimed was inaccurate. Be that as it may,
>Jan had been working on a project, as part of his post-doc here, to look at
>large-scale, low-frequency patterns of tree growth and climate in long
>tree-ring records provided to him by Fritz Schweingruber. With the addition
>of a couple of sites from foxtail pine in California, Jan amassed a
>collection of 14 tree-ring sites scattered somewhat uniformly over the
>30-70 degree NH latitude band, with most extending back 1000-1200 years.
>All of the sites are from temperature-sensitive locations (i.e. high
>elevation or high northern latitude. It is, as far as I know, the largest,
>longest, and most spatially representative set of such
>temperature-sensitive tree-ring data yet put together for the NH
>extra-tropics.
>
>In order to preserve maximum low-frequency variance, Jan used the Regional
>Curve Standardization (RCS) method, used previously by Briffa and myself
>with great success. Only here, Jan chose to do things in a somewhat radical
>fashion. Since the replication at each site was generally insufficient to
>produce a robust RCS chronology back to, say, AD 1000, Jan pooled all of
>the original measurement series into 2 classes of growth trends: non-linear
>(~700 ring-width series) and linear (~500 ring-width series). He than
>performed independent RCS on the each of the pooled sets and produced 2 RCS
>chronologies with remarkably similar multi-decadal and centennial
>low-frequency characteristics. These chronologies are not good at
>preserving high-frquency climate information because of the scattering of
>sites and the mix of different species, but the low-frequency patterns are
>probably reflecting the same long-term changes in temperature. Jan than
>averaged the 2 RCS chronologies together to produce a single chronology
>extending back to AD 800. It has a very well defined Medieval Warm Period –
>Little Ice Age – 20th Century Warming pattern, punctuated by strong decadal
>fluctuations of inferred cold that correspond well with known histories of
>neo-glacial advance in some parts of the NH. The punctuations also appear,
>in some cases, to be related to known major volcanic eruptions.
>
>Jan originally only wanted to show this NH extra-tropical RCS chronology in
>a form scaled to millimeters of growth to show how forest productivity and
>carbon sequestration may be modified by climate variability and change over
>relatively long time scales. However, I encouraged him to compare his
>series with NH instrumental temperature data and the proxy estimates
>produced by Jones, Briffa, and Mann in order bolster the claim that his
>unorthodox method of pooling the tree-ring data was producing a record that
>was indeed related to temperatures in some sense. This he did by linearly
>rescaling his RCS chronology from mm of growth to temperature anomalies. In
>so doing, Jan demonstrated that his series, on inter-decadal time scales
>only, was well correlated to the annual NH instrumental record. This result
>agreed extremely well with those of Jones and Briffa. Of course, some of
>the same data were used by them, but probably not more than 40 percent
>(Briffa in particular), so the comparison is based on mostly, but not
>fully, independent data. The similarity indicated that Jan’s approach was
>valid for producing a useful reconstruction of multi-decadal temperature
>variability (probably weighted towards the warm-season months, but it is
>impossible to know by how much) over a larger region of the NH
>extra-tropics than that produced before by Jones and Briffa. It also
>revealed somewhat more intense cooling in the Little Ice Age that is more
>consistent with what the borehole temperatures indicate back to AD 1600.
>This result also bolsters the argument for a reasonably large-scale
>Medieval Warm Period that may not be as warm as the late 20th century, but
>is of much(?) greater significance than that produced previously.
>
>Of course, Jan also had to compare his record with the hockey stick since
>that is the most prominent and oft-cited record of NH temperatures covering
>the past 1000 years. The results were consistent with the differences shown
>by others, mainly in the century-scale of variability. Again, the Esper
>series shows a very strong, even canonical, Medieval Warm Period – Little
>Ice Age – 20th Century Warming pattern, which is largely missing from the
>hockey stick. Yet the two series agree reasonably well on inter-decadal
>timescales, even though they may not be 1:1 expressions of the same
>temperature window (i.e. annual vs. warm-season weighted). However, the
>tree-ring series used in the hockey stick are warm-season weighted as well,
>so the difference between “annual” and “warm-season weighted” is probably
>not as large as it might seem, especially before the period of instrumental
>data (e.g. pre-1700) in the hockey stick. So, they both share a significant
>degree of common interdecal temperature information (and some, but not
>much, data), but do not co-vary well on century timescales. Again, this has
>all been shown before by others using different temperature
>reconstructions, but Jan’s result is probably the most comprehensive
>expression (I believe) of extra-tropical NH temperatures back to AD 800 on
>multi-decadal and century time scales.
>
>Now back to the Broecker perspectives piece. I felt compelled to refute
>Broecker’s erroneous claim that tree rings could not preserve long-term
>temperature information. So, I organized a “Special Wally Seminar” in which
>I introduced the topic to him and the packed audience using Samuel
>Johnson’s famous “I refute it thus” statement in the form of “Jan Esper and
>I refute Broecker thus”. Jan than presented, in a very detailed and well
>espressed fashion, his story and Broecker became an instant convert. In
>other words, Wally now believes that long tree-ring records, when properly
>selected and processed, can preserve low-frequency temperature variability
>on centennial time scales. Others in the audience came away with the same
>understanding, one that we dendrochronologists always knew to be the case.
>This was the entire purpose of Jan’s work and the presentation of it to
>Wally and others. Wally had expressed some doubts about the hockey stick
>previously to me and did so again in his perspectives article. So, Jan’s
>presentation strongly re-enforced Wally’s opinion about the hockey stick,
>which he has expressed to others including several who attended a
>subsequent NOAA meeting at Lamont. I have no control over what Wally says
>and only hope that we can work together to reconcile, in a professional,
>friendly manner, the differences between the hockey stick and other proxy
>temperature records covering the past 1000 years. This I would like to do.
>
>I do think that the Medieval Warm Period was a far more significant event
>than has been recognized previously, as much because the high-resolution
>data to evaluate it had not been available before. That is much less so the
>case now. It is even showing up strongly now in long SH tree-ring series.
>However, there is still the question of how strong this event was in the
>tropics. I maintain that we do not have the proxies to tell us that now.
>The tropical ice core data are very difficult to interpret as temperature
>proxies (far worse than tree rings for sure and maybe even unrelated to
>temperatures in any simple linear sense as is often assumed), so I do not
>believe that they can be used alone as records to test for the existence of
>a Medieval Warm Period in the tropics. That being the case, there are
>really no other high-resolution records from the tropics to use, and the
>teleconnections between long extra-tropical proxies and the tropics are, I
>believe, far too tenuous and probably unstable to use to sort out this
>issue.
>
>So, at this stage I would argue that the Medieval Warm Period was probably
>a global extra-tropical event, at the very least, with warmth that was
>persistent and probably comparable to much of what we have experienced in
>the 20th century. However, I would not claim (and nor would Jan) that it
>exceeded the warmth of the late 20th century. We simply do not have the
>precision or the proxy replication to say that yet. This being said, I do
>find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event
>to be grossly premature and probably wrong. Kind of like Mark Twain’s
>commment that accounts of his death were greatly exaggerated. If, as some
>people believe, a degree of symmetry in climate exists between the
>hemispheres, which would appear to arise from the tropics, then the
>existence of a Medieval Warm Period in the extra-tropics of the NH and SH
>argues for its existence in the tropics as well. Only time and an enlarged
>suite of proxies that extend into the tropics will tell if this is true.
>
>I hope that what I have written clarifies the rumor and expresses my views
>more completely and accurately.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Ed
>
>==================================
>Dr. Edward R. Cook
>Doherty Senior Scholar
>Tree-Ring Laboratory
>Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
>Palisades, New York 10964 USA
>Phone: 1-845-xxxxx
>Fax: 1-845-xxxxx
>Email: drdendro@xxxxx.xxxxx.xxx
>==================================

This is weird. I used Web of Knowledge, “create citation report”, and
added 1999 thru 2009 numbers. Can’t do you becoz of the too many PDJs
problem.

Here are 3 results …

Kevin Trenberth, 9049
Me, 5523
Ben, 2407

The max on their list has only 3365 cites over this period.

Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work.

Tom.

==============================================================

UPDATE 4:

Barry Woods writes via email:

The social network is of interest..

In the earlier emails, when Mann wanted to contact Monbiot, he got Monbiot’s email address from George Marshall

(Marshall is a veteran greenpeace campaigner, founder of Rising Tide, COIN –) and creator of a – Deniers Hall of Shame.. and very active at grass roots

Perhaps scientists a bit too close to activists, picking up their thinking about ‘deniers’ and fossil fuel companies ? Marshall had been battling Chevron, in the 90’s about rainforest destruction (Rainforest Foundation)

And of course Monbiot – published a Deniers photo Hall of Shame in the Guardian (including Booker) and ‘fights’ Booker on climate change

– that when Mann wanted to get hold of Monbiot, about Durkin and Great Global Warming Scandal..

Mann got Monbiots email address from none other than George Marshall (Rising Tide – COIN) Some scientists perhaps been influenced a bit too much by activist rhetoric,.. and picked up the rhetoric and language of activists/environmentalistsie

I.e. when did Mann start using the phrase ‘climate denier’?

George Marshall and Mark Lynas writing about it in 2003, – New Statesman – including a whose who of climate change deniers – (lindzen one of them)

Marshall had a Deniers Hall of Shame in 2001-2002 (Rising Tide) – Lindzen included

And if you look at Wayback machine – Lynas and Marshall were very early entries to Realclimate’s blog roll.

Barry

===============================================================

UPDATE 5:

From Junkscience.com

In response to a polite media inquiry from Wall Street journal editorial writer Anne Jolis, Mann rages, in part, “Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense” — and then cc’s his response to Media Matters, Joe Romm and other allies in the warmest-media industrial complex.

Ms. Jolis,
I’ve taken the liberty of copying this exchange to a few others who might be
interested in it, within the broader context of issues related to the history of biased
reporting on climate change at the Wall Street Journal Europe,
Yours,
Mike Mann
On Oct 23, 2009, at 12:42 PM, Michael Mann wrote:
Ms. Jolis,
I am traveling through this weekend and have only brief email access, so can
only respond w/ a very short email to your inquiry. I’m sad to report that the tone of your questions suggests a highly distorted, contrarian-driven view of the entirety of our science. The premise of essentially everyone of your questions is wrong, and is contradicted by assessments such as the IPCC report, reports by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, etc. The National Academy of Science report (more info below) reported in 2006 that “The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence…”. The conclusions in the most recent 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment report have been significantly strengthened relative to what was originally concluded in our work from the 1990s or in the IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report, something that of course should have been expected given the numerous additional studies that have since been
done that all point in the same direction. The conclusion that large-scale
recent warmth likely exceeds the range seen in past centuries has been extended from the
past 1000 years in the TAR, to the past 1300 years in the current report, and the confidence in this conclusion has been upped from likely in the Third Assessment Report to very likely in the current report for the past half millennium.
Since then, the conclusions have been further strengthened by other work,
including work by us. Please see e.g. the reporting by the BBC:
[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8236797.stm
[2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7592575.stm
You don’t seem to be aware of the fact that our original “Hockey Stick”
reconstruction didn’t even use the “Yamal” data. It seems you have uncritically accepted
nearly every specious contrarian claim and innuendo against me, my colleagues, and the
science of climate change itself. Furthermore, I doubt that the various authors you cite
as critics, such as Pollack and Smerdon, would in any way agree w/ your assessment of
this work.

Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense, and would work
to further besmirch the reputation of the Wall Street Journal, which is strongly been
called into question in the past with regard to the treatment of climate change.
I’ve copied my response to a number of others who might wish to comment
further, as I will be unavailable to speak with you until next week.

I’ve pasted below various summaries by mainstream news venues which reported
a couple years ago that the National Academy of Sciences, in the words of Nature “Affirmed The Hockey Stick” below this message.

In addition, here are a few links you might want to read to better
familiarize yourself with what the science actually states with regard to the issues raised in
your inquiry below:
[3]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
[4]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/the-ipcc-fourthassessment-
summary
-for-policy-makers/
[5]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/06/national-academiessynthesis-
repor
t/
[6]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/hockey-sticks-round-
27/
[7]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/new-analysisreproduces-
graph-of-l
ate-20th-century-temperature-rise/
[8]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-tothe-
latest-hockey
-stick-controversy/
[9]http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/a-new-take-on-anold-
millennium/

Finally, let me suggest, under the assumption that your intent is indeed to
report the reality of our current scientific understanding, rather than contrarian
politically-motivated spin, that any legitimate journalistic inquiry into
the current state of the science, and the extent to which uncertainties and controversy
have been overstated and misrepresented in the public discourse, would probably choose
to focus on the issues raised here:

Yours,
Mike Mann
___________________NEWS CLIPS ON ACADEMY REPORT_____________________
from BBC (6/23/06 “Backing for ‘Hockey Stick’ graph”)
The Earth was hotter in the late 20th Century than it had been in the last
400 or possibly 1,000 years, a report requested by the US Congress concludes. It backs some of the key findings of the original study that gave rise to the iconic “hockey stick”
graph.) from New York Times (Andy Revkin, 6/22/06 “Science Panel Packs Study on
Warming Climate”):

At a news conference at the headquarters of the National Academies, several
members of the panel reviewing the study said they saw no sign that its authors had
intentionally chosen data sets or methods to get a desired result.
“I saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation,” said one member, Peter
Bloomfield, a statistics professor at [11]North Carolina State University. He added that
his impression was the study was “an honest attempt to construct a data analysis procedure.

Boston Globe (Beth Daley, 6/22/06 “Report backs global warming claims”):
Our conclusion is that this recent period of warming is likely the warmest in
a (millennium), said John Wallace, one of the 12 members on the panel and
professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington.
Los Angeles Times (Thomas H. Maugh II and Karen Kaplan, “U.S. Panel Backs
Data on Global Warming”):

After a comprehensive review of climate change data, the nation’s preeminent
scientific body found that average temperatures on Earth had risen by about 1 degree
over the last century, a development that “is unprecedented for the last 400 years and
potentially the last several millennia.”

and
The panel affirmed that proxy measurements made over the last 150 years
correlated well with actual measurements during that period, lending credence to the proxy data for earlier times. It concluded that, “with a high level of confidence,” global temperatures during the last century were higher than at any time since 1600.
Although the report did not place numerical values on that confidence level,
committee member and statistician Peter Bloomfield of North Carolina State University
said the panel was about 95% sure of the conclusion.

The committee supported Mann’s other conclusions, but said they were not as
definitive. For example, the report said the panel was “less confident” that the 20th century was the warmest century since 1000, largely because of the scarcity of data from
before 1600. Bloomfield said the committee was about 67% confident of the validity of that
finding the same degree of confidence Mann and his colleagues had placed in their initial
report.

Associated Press (syndicate with 100s of newspapers accross the U.S. (John
Heilprin, 6/22/06 “The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, perhaps
even longer”):
The National Academy scientists concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes
research from the late 1990s was “likely” to be true, said John “Mike” Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the ’90s research “are very close to being right” and are supported by even more recent data, Wallace said.
and
Overall, the panel agreed that the warming in the last few decades of the
20th century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years, though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a “Little Ice Age” from about 1500 to 1850.

Washington Post (Juliet Eilperin, 6/23/06 “Study Confirms Past Few Decades
Warmest on Record”):
Panel member Kurt M. Cuffey, a geography professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, said at a news briefing that the report “essentially validated” the
conclusions Mann reported in 1998 and 1999 using temperature records. The panel also
estimated there is a roughly 67 percent chance that Mann is right in saying the past 25 years were the warmest in a 1,000 years.

Nature (Geoff Brumfield, 6/28/06 “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph”)
“We roughly agree with the substance of their findings,” says Gerald North,
the committee’s chair and a climate scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station. In particular, he says, the committee has a “high level of confidence” that the second half of the twentieth century was warmer than any other period in the past four centuries. But, he adds, claims for the earlier period covered by the study, from AD 900 to 1600, are less
certain. This earlier period is particularly important because global-warming sceptics
claim that the current warming trend is a rebound from a ‘little ice age’ around 1600.
Overall, the committee thought the temperature reconstructions from that era had only a
two-to-one chance of being right.
and
says Peter Bloomfield, a statistician at North Carolina State University in
Raleigh, who was involved in the latest report. “This study was the first of its kind, and
they had to make choices at various stages about how the data were processed,” he says,
adding that he “would not be embarrassed” to have been involved in the work.
New Scientist (Roxanne Khamsi, 6/23/06, “US report backs study on global
warming”):
It was really the first analysis of its type, panel member Kurt Cuffey of the
University of California, Berkeley, US, said at a news conference on Thursday.
He added that it was the first time anyone has done such a large-scale and
continual analysis of temperature over time. So its not surprising that they could have
probably done some detailed aspects of it better.

But it was a remarkable contribution and gave birth to a debate thats
ongoing, thats teaching us a lot about how climate has changed.
Science (Richard Kerr, June 30, 2006, “Yes, Its been Getting Warmer in Here
Since the CO2 Begain to Rise”): In addition, none of the three committee members at the press briefing– North, Bloomfield, and paleoclimatologist Kurt Cuffey of the University of California, Berkeley- -had found any hint of scientific impropriety. “I certainly did not see anything inappropriate,” said North. “Maybe things could have been done better, but after all, it was the first analysis of its kind.”
–
On Oct 23, 2009, at 10:41 AM, Jolis, Anne wrote:
Dear Dr. Mann,
My name is Anne Jolis, and I’m with the Wall Street Journal Europe, based in
London. I’m working on a piece about climate change, and specifically the growing
questions that people outside the field have about the methods and processes used by climatologists and other climate-change scientists – and, necessarily, about the conclusions that result. The idea came from the recent controversy that has arisen once again over Steve McIntyre, the publication of the full Yamal data used in Keith Briffa’s work. This of course raises questions among climate scientistis, and observers, about whether the socalled “hockey stick” graph of global temperatures , as produced by Dr. Briffa and originally by yourself, was drawn from narrow data which, and then when broadened to include a wider range of available dendroclimatological data, seems to show no important spike in global temperatures in the last 100 year .

I realize this is not exactly the silverbullet to anthropogenic global warming that some would like to read into it, but it seems to me that it does underscore some of the issues in climate science. Specifically, the publication of the data, and the earlier controversy over your work, seems to illustrate that best practices and reliable methods of data collection remain far from established, and that much of what is presented as scientific fact is really more of a value judgment based on select data. Would you agree?

I’d love to get some insight from you for my article. I’ll be filing this
weekend, but I can call you any time it’s convenient for you on Friday – just let me know
the best time and number. Please note that if we do speak on the phone, I will email you
with any quotes or paraphrases that I would like to attribute to you, before publication, so
as to secure your approval and confirm the accuracy of what I’m attributing to you.

Additionally, if you’d like to correspond via email, that’s fine too. I’ve listed below some
of the questions and assumptions I’m working on – if, in lieu of a phone call, you’d
like to answer and/or respond to these, as well as share any other thoughts you have
on these issues, I’d be most grateful. Feel welcome to reply at length!

I thank you in advance for your time and attention, and look forward to any of your comments.
All the best,
Anne Jolis
Mobile: +44 xxxxxx

– Given that methods in climate science are still being refined, do you
agree with policy makers’ and advocates’ use of data such as your own? Do you feel it is
accurately represented to laymans, and that the inherent uncertainties present in the
data are appropriately underscored? As a citizen, do you feel there is enough
certainty in the conclusions of, for instance, the latest IPCC report, to introduce new
economic regulations? Why or why not?

-What methods do you feel are the most accurate for predicting future climate
change, for evaluatinag the causes of climate change and for predicting whether or what
man can do to try to control or mitigate climate change in the future in the future? Why
do you feel these methods are the most accurate? Do you feel they’re given enough weight
in the current debate?

-What is your opinion of the value of Steve McIntyre’s work? Clearly he is
not a professional scientist, but do you feel there is nonetheless a place for his
“auditing” in the climate science community? Why or why not?

-Do you think McIntyre’s work and findings are likely to change the way
leading climate scientists operate? Do you think his recent campaign to get Dr. Keith Briffa
to publish the Yamal data he used is likely to make climate scientists more forthcoming
with their data? Do you think his work will make scientists, policymakers and advocates
any more exacting about the uncertainties in their procedures, methods and conclusions
when they present scientific data?

-How would you respond to the critique that, as a key part of the review
processes of publications in the field of climate science, as something of a “gatekeeper,”
you have rejected and otherwise sought to suppress work that contradicted your work.
Is this fair?
Why or why not? How would you characterize your selection process for work
that is worthy
of publication?
-Do you stand by your original “hockey stick” graf, even after the
publication of borehole
data from Henry Pollack and Jason Smerdon that seems to contradict your
conclusions? Or
work published in 2005 by Hans von Storch that seems to indicate that the
predictive
capabilities of the method you used in your original “hockey stick” would not
be able to
predict current temperatures?
–
Michael E. Mann
Professor
Director, Earth System Science Center (ESSC)
Department of Meteorology Phone: (814) xxxxx
503 Walker Building FAX: (814) xxxxx
The Pennsylvania State University email: [12]mann@psu.edu
University Park, PA 16802-5013
website: [13]http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html
“Dire Predictions” book site:
[14]http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html
–

Mann: “Its (sic) hard to imagine what sort of comparison wouldn’t be deceptive.”

The e-mails are below.

###

On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 18:06, Michael Mann wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> thanks for the comments. well, ok. but this is the full CMIP3
> ensemble, so at least the plot is sampling the range of choices
> regarding if and how indirect effects are represented, what the cloud
> radiative feedback & sensitivity is, etc. across the modeling
> community. I’m not saying that these things necessarily cancel out
> (after all, there is an interesting and perhaps somewhat disturbing
> compensation between indirect aerosol forcing and sensitivity across
> the CMIP3 models that defies the assumption of independence), but if
> showing the full spread from CMIP3 is deceptive, its hard to imagine
> what sort of comparison wouldn’t be deceptive (your point re MAGICC
> notwithstanding),
>
> perhaps Gavin has some further comments on this (it is his plot after
> all),
>
> mike
>
> On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Tom Wigley wrote:
> > Mike,
> >
> > The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical
> > runs with PCM look as though they match observations — but the
> > match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low
> > climate sensitivity — compensating errors. In my (perhaps too
> > harsh)
> > view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
> > results by individual authors and by IPCC. This is why I still use
> > results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least
> > here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and
> > forcing assumptions/uncertainties.
> >
> > Tom.
> > +++++++++++++++++++
> >
> > Michael Mann wrote:
> > > thanks Tom,
> > > I’ve taken the liberty of attaching a figure that Gavin put
> > > together the other day (its an update from a similar figure he
> > > prepared for an earlier RealClimate post. see:
> > > http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktonsdeliberate-
manipulation/). It is indeed worth a thousand words, and drives home
Tom’s point below. We’re planning on doing a post on this shortly, but would be
nice to see the Sep. HadCRU numbers first,
> > > mike
> > > On Oct 14, 2009, at 3:01 AM, Tom Wigley wrote:
> > > > Dear all,
> > > > At the risk of overload, here are some notes of mine on the
> > > > recent
> > > > lack of warming. I look at this in two ways. The first is to
> > > > look at
> > > > the difference between the observed and expected anthropogenic
> > > > trend relative to the pdf for unforced variability. The second
> > > > is to remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI variations from the
> > > > observed data.
> > > > Both methods show that what we are seeing is not unusual. The
> > > > second
> > > > method leaves a significant warming over the past decade.
> > > > These sums complement Kevin’s energy work.
> > > > Kevin says … “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack
> > > > of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”. I
> > > > do not
> > > > agree with this.
> > > > Tom.
> > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++
> > > > Kevin Trenberth wrote:
> > > > > Hi all
> > > > > Well I have my own article on where the heck is global
> > > > > warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have
> > > > > broken records the past two days for the coldest days on
> > > > > record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days
> > > > > was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the
> > > > > previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F
> > > > > and also a record low, well below the previous record low.
> > > > > This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game
> > > > > was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below
> > > > > freezing weather).
> > > > > Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change
> > > > > planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. /Current Opinion in
> > > > > Environmental Sustainability/, *1*, 19-27,
> > > > > doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [PDF]
> > > > >
(A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
> > > > > The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at
> > > > > the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data
> > > > > published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there
> > > > > should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong.
> > > > > Our observing system is inadequate.
> > > > > That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People
> > > > > like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly
> > > > > correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the
> > > > > change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The
> > > > > PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO
> > > > > index became positive in September for first time since Sept
> > > > > 2007.

=====================================================

UPDATE7:

In October 1996, Keith Briffa frets that the calibration for tree-ring analysis may be off due to manmade changes in the environment.

“I spoke to you about the problem of anthropogenic influences ( i.e. increased CO2, nitrate fallout , increased UV radiation) possibly having an influence on recent tree growth and so complicating our efforts to use these recent data to define how we interpret past tree growth. Is it possible to put in some reference to me worrying about this?”

The full e-mail is below.

###

date: Tue Oct 15 17:01:05 1996
from: Keith Briffa
subject: New Scientist article
to: Fred Pearce
Dear Fred
I have done a redraft of the article. I know you said not to
rewrite it (preferably) but rather to correct, make notes suggestins etc.
I thought about this for some time and realized that it woulld be far more
difficult to indicate the precise places,the precise problems and the
suggested corrections at all of the places I considered were subtle
misinterpretations of what I said, or meant, or feel. It therefore seemed
easier FOR BOTH OF US if I went through one attempt at what amounts to a
simple rewording. This lets me change the inference , correct minor errors
and fill in all your questions without having to explain the myriad details
of where and why.
Do not , please, grimace and get pissed off at my apparent cheek!
Hopefully, you can see when you go through this draft that most of it is
entirely yours and my changes are meant to be efficient and constructive.
I hope you will be able to accept this version pretty much as it stands now.
Incidentally, a pedantic point, but where you refer to a tree with rings
about 30 microns wide being equivelent to a tree increasing its GIRTH by one
centimetre in 100 years, should this not be 2 cms? Assuming the tree has a
starting diameter of about 15 cm , after 100 years its diameter will be 15.6 cm
(the rings occur on both sides of the tree) so that the cicumference change over
this period will be 1.9 cm.
There remain a couple of points for your consideration. Is it possible,
somehow, to get the ADVANCE-10K name in and explained( i.e. the project
title)? This is important to us as publicity in the context of our funding.
Also, I spoke to you about the problem of anthropogenic influences ( i.e.
increased CO2, nitrate fallout , increased UV radiation) possibly having
an influence on recent tree growth and so complicating our efforts to use
these recent data to define how we interpret past tree growth. Is it possible
to put in some reference to me worrying about this?
Finally, can you suggest to the editor that we put a footnote in to
flag our home page which details all the objectives and participants ?
(perhaps with the reference to the ADVANCE-10K acronym,title and grant
number)
I look forward to hearing from you and can send the text as ASCII,
WORD or WORDPERFECT files – for now should I fax it and if so to where?
cheers
Keith

No password but a bitcoin address? Mr FOIA can go f*ck himself. What’s the point of those emails being out there if there is a campaign to have only selected people see them? Are you going to be the high and mighty ones to release the truth to us great unwashed?

Its going to take a lot of work to go through this pile , there mat not be any ‘world changing ‘ bits in it but even in the personal stuff there may be the odd nugget of gold .
But the example was good

‘I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!)

But in public we endless praised it and attacked any who suggested it was ‘crap ‘ .

I can hear the buzzing of an angry Mann from all this distance , so Simon better get ready to go down on their knees for a bit of public contrition., as Mann never forgives nor forgets those that fail to show due difference to his ‘mightiness’

Well, if the password has been released, it will eventually get out in the open. It is a good idea, but might be difficult, to be a bit careful about ‘sensitive or socially damaging’ emails, although it isn’t clear what FOIA has in mind by that. If things that are truly personal, I would be in favor of keeping them private. If things that are “socially damaging” because they show the individuals in question don’t know what they are doing, I would be in favor of opening them up.

Kudos to FOIA for all the efforts. I’ve got my fingers cautiously crossed on how this last batch will shake out . . .

We can’t pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it’s not away from something and someone else.
………………………………
It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.

Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.

Is the password for real?
Do we now wait while people of integrity sort the remnants? To avoid accidental damage to the innocent ?
Is FOIA looking for donations?
Or is the bitcoin a low piece of humour?
How does bitcoin work?

JiminyBob says:
March 13, 2013 at 7:55 am
No password but a bitcoin address? Mr FOIA can go f*ck himself. What’s the point of those emails being out there if there is a campaign to have only selected people see them? Are you going to be the high and mighty ones to release the truth to us great unwashed?
========================================================================

No password but a bitcoin address? Mr FOIA can go f*ck himself. What’s the point of those emails being out there if there is a campaign to have only selected people see them? Are you going to be the high and mighty ones to release the truth to us great unwashed?

And your plan would be?

IIRC Briffa was seriously ill around 2009 – should such private correspondence with Phil Jones (his boss) be splattered all over the net? What purpose would that serve?

It is good to know the candid judgments of scientists when they are not intimidated and browbeaten by the Manniacs of the IPCC/climate science world.

It turns out that was already a CG2 email but I don’t think it received adequate attention previoiusly (at least I hadn’t seen it discussed).

One can dismiss one phrase but this is uttered in reference to why a certain study was not done in that way, yet the public and even the “climate science community” was not allowed to know the actual candid judgments of these scientists! Instead, when McIntyre & McKittrick arrived on the scene the wagons were circled against outsiders and it was pretended that only ignorant outsiders could question the august majesty of the Mann et al. recon.

I appreciate the risks you took and thanks for mentioning that you were not compensated, and that are you are not ‘working’ for anyone other than the billions members of humankind who are being taxed, even now, to feed the vain imaginings of the deceitful.

As you can imagine, it will take other pairs of eyes to see significances in what may seem to us individuals to be innocuous communications. There was so much coordination of the perfidy, the misrepresentation of science and in the bumbling efforts to pervert the meaning of ‘scientific conclusion’ it is inevitable that further conspiracies will emerge from a close reading of the full text.

What has been important in CG2 was the ‘context’ which you provided, showing that the abuses and conspiracies described in CG1 were real. Implications in CG3 will take quite some time to solidify, but will do so.

A question that always emerges from scandal is ‘What did he know and when did he know it?” The full index will provide many insights into that question. I suspect there is a lot of file-burning taking place right now in certain quarters.

I need never know who you are. Your commitment to staying the hands of the oppressors and revealing their criminal intent can serve eternally as a great lesson for all students of science and social morality.

Jiminy, the previous e-mail releases have already been filtered by FOIA.
Any complaints about that?

So, I think the post by Tim Ball put the heat on FOIA, so they did a premature early release with a fake cover story to throw off the wolves. I wonder if I added to it by revealing that FOIA’s birthday can be gleaned from the releases.

Personally, I’d be happy to see the password restricted to those within the sceptic community who have done the most up to now to disseminate the CAGW narrative and provide honest, informed commentary and analysis. I just don’t think this should be a ‘free-for-all’ – we need educated, scientific eyes scanning these emails, identifying what is relevant, what is not, what is public domain and what should remain respectfully personal.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am no fan of censoring information, but I really do think this is a prime example of an occasion when we, the sceptic community, should be seen to be acting responsibly and with due diligence – let us ask the most qualified amongst us to undertake the long business of extracting only the most salient and appropriate information for public disclosure and discussion.

The big story it seems to me is that it sounds like MR FOIA is an insider…i.e. a whistleblower. Others agree? Just got here, so haven’t had a chance to digest all. Excited enough though that I wanted to chime in, even if prematurely.

I don’t know who FOIA is; but if he/she composed the “FOIA 2013: the password” document without help, he/she has excellent command of the English language. Based on his/her statement “USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK“, I infer he/she is not from the UK and likely not from the USA. However, my gut feeling tells me he/she is from an English speaking environment.

Jimbo says:
March 13, 2013 at 8:40 amWhich country does FOIA come from?

Clue 1
“Even skimming through all 220.000 emails….”

Clue 2: The text lacks the definite article before some nouns where there should have been one. I’m not a native English speaker myself, but I couldn’t help noticing that, especially since the English otherwise is very good (or looks good to me, at least). If the speaker is European (Clue 1) this, I think, restricts the possible native language to one of the slavic languages (except Bulgarian), the baltic languages or the Finno-Permic languages (Finnish, Saami, Estonian).

cRR Kampen says:
March 13, 2013 at 8:52 am
“Stealing private emails, that’s great. So Peter Gleick is more than absolutely in the right, then.”

Does the left not usually endorse whistleblowers when it serves their purposes? (Yes, I’m conflating warmism and leftism. Both movements want an absolute state; preferrably a world state. Example from warmism: Schellnhuber and his Grand Transformation; example from leftism: H: G. Welles.)

As for Gleick: He is not a whistleblower but a wire fraudster, impersonator and forger; which is something different.

Well, if the password has been released, it will eventually get out in the open. It is a good idea, but might be difficult, to be a bit careful about ‘sensitive or socially damaging’ emails, although it isn’t clear what FOIA has in mind by that. If things that are truly personal, I would be in favor of keeping them private. If things that are “socially damaging” because they show the individuals in question don’t know what they are doing, I would be in favor of opening them up.

I agree that the effort to keep the allegedly “personal” an potentially “sensitive or socially damaging” contents of the all.7z file closely held will prove futile, in spite of whatever good intentions prevail among the skeptical blogger community.

But good intentions notwithstanding, why should those “dirty laundry” communications be withheld from public scrutiny at all?

The confabulators of the climate catastrophe caterwaul were using their “business” e-mail accounts for these communications, all such accounts paid for – directly or indirectly – by public monies mulcted from the citizenry of their respective countries. That’s why these messages were all subject to the Freedom of Information laws prevailing in the United Kingdom (and similarly in these United States, for the scheming sons-of-dogs prevaricating on their grant funding applications to suck fraudulently at the taxpayer teat over here).

If the closed-shop “consensus” clowns were stupid enough to bounce around e-mail of potentially “sensitive or socially damaging” nature using their official business accounts, it’s as much subject to discovery in both civil and criminal actions-at-law as any other evidence, and all the more legitimately actionable for their having made improper use of resources specifically purpose’d to facilitate the work for which government funds had been allocated.

I’m sure FOIA understands the password’s gonna get out sooner or later.

But…

Doing it this way maximizes the probability that serious material will get out first, before someone less fastidious decides to post someone’s bitchy post-conference remarks about flatulence or coming down with the clap, at which point the alarmist megaphone brigade will start their usual projection-driven prattling about ‘personal attacks’ and ‘character assassination’.

Is it possible that the original culprit was found after Climategate 1 and somebody else released the lacklustre Climategate 2 with the Climategate 3 zipped files just as a way of stopping people thinking there is a conspiracy?

1) I notice what an extensive justification is made in the email to defend why they are deviating from the hockey stick, as if to keep from being expelled from the church of hockey holiness. I have never heard of such a thing. How does Mann hold such power over these people? Aren’t scientists supposed to be independent-minded?
2) While it is great fun to speculate about FOIA identity, it seems best to me to confine this to conversation so as not to ruin this noble person’s career or endanger them.
3) The quiet was killing me, but we are back to excitement!

The big story it seems to me is that it sounds like MR FOIA is an insider…i.e. a whistleblower. Others agree?

Emphatically. All the “Liberal” fascist warmista noise about a “hacker” had been preposterous from the beginning, but this supporting information – proved by the provision of the password – gives their sweating weaselishness an even more musteline reek.

I suspect that they don’t want to admit (even among themselves) that their ranks are even more rotten with disloyalty than they are stewed in criminal conspiracy.

Craig Loehle says:
March 13, 2013 at 9:14 am
“1) I notice what an extensive justification is made in the email to defend why they are deviating from the hockey stick, as if to keep from being expelled from the church of hockey holiness. I have never heard of such a thing. How does Mann hold such power over these people? Aren’t scientists supposed to be independent-minded?”

Warmism is a Degenerative Research Program. It creates protective hypotheses to shield the core theory, not to acquire new knowledge as a Non-degenerative Research Program would. So all acolytes of the theory will coordinate their actions like seen in this e-mail to not endanger the central theory. They all know where their bread is buttered.

I notice what an extensive justification is made in the email to defend why they are deviating from the hockey stick, as if to keep from being expelled from the church of hockey holiness. I have never heard of such a thing. How does Mann hold such power over these people? Aren’t scientists supposed to be independent-minded?

What in the world gives you to assume that these CAGW charlatans were ever scientists?

I spent yesterday outlining Oberlin prof David Orr’s book trying to change education globally to create what he calls biophilia and then a Pew Foundation financed book insisting that a global authoritarian government would be necessary to force humanity to make changes to avoid global warming catastrophe. Then I went back and cross-referenced what the UN is pushing under Agenda 21 on the West as Education for Sustainability so I could write it up.

And I thought this would be a good time for the rest of those emails. And then left to take one of my kids to the doctor. Unbelievably great timing if the extent to which CAGW and sustainability were being made the center of K-12 under Common Core and those Next Generation Science Standards and the C3 Social Studies Framework were better known.

This is being used as the excuse to change everything in the West. Including transforming the economy to a “needs economy” misnamed distributed capitalism. This will need lots of publicity. We have whole degree programs now being created to get discredited theories and models implemented as public policy anyway. K-12 was next in the US and this should make it harder.

Anthony, sorry, but your second example is also an old one!
go to the foia2011 site and search to check (eg search for “grossly premature”)

REPLY: Well, this illustrates perfectly the problem of sorting through all this. Many of these still haven been discussed/noted. I went with what was in the all.zip file, and while FOIA noted some duplicates, without doing cross reference, hard to tell. Had Tom Nelson not published the note, we would have had time to make a better announcement. As it stands it was the best I could do in my morning routine while getting ready for work. – Anthony

1) I notice what an extensive justification is made in the email to defend why they are deviating from the hockey stick, as if to keep from being expelled from the church of hockey holiness. I have never heard of such a thing. How does Mann hold such power over these people? Aren’t scientists supposed to be independent-minded?

Mann is like the Steve Jobs of climate science… Except he’s a bad apple!

The email detailing the work done by Jan Esper and Edward Cook is very interesting. It shows the MWP and LIA, therefore calling into question the methodology and data used by Mann in his hockey stick paper. Why haven’t we heard of this research in the hockey stick debates?

I don’t care if anyone ever learns FOIA’s “truename”, in fact I hope for his sake we never do. But having taken part in the secret identity sweepstakes in the past, it’s still fun to speculate on some of the tidbits he dropped in the letter. (assuming he was being truthful in all details, and we have no reason to suspect otherwise, but also no proof of that)

Insider of some sort – definitely. “The first glimpses I got behind the scenes…”

Only people who had some official capacity at some institution related to the work were allowed “glimpses behind the scenes”. Also “Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future.” appears to favor the theory that these things were temporarily left unguarded on some server FOIA had open access too, no hacking required. He seems to regard his ability to do this as a fluke caused by a temporary mistake on someone’s part that no one else could ever exploit. No pure hacker would ever characterize his work that way, so that appears to rule out the hacking theory. (much beloved by “The Team”)

one last thing; the phrase “It’s easy for many of us in the western world” to me rules out Russia, since it’s a point of pride to almost all Russians to point out that they are NOT part of the “western world”. As previously stated, the English is excellent but scattered here and there are some sentence structures that suggest a non-native speaker. Interesting clues, all of them. But over all, we can say with confidence, this is a man whom Diogenes would have been proud to have found.

This is an odd coincidence.
I just completed reverse-engineering the 6365 CG1-CG2 .txt files to their original email mbox format which makes them compatible with Mozilla Thunderbird, and tagging them with the all.7z duplicate file names.

Screencap:

Thunderbird is an extremely powerful tool, as it allows advanced sorting, keyword searching and reading in a native email environment with a more intuitive interface. Far superior to culling through individual text files.
the Thunderbird compatible file is 70 megs, and there are a few careful steps that need to be followed when importing it to your installed version.

Anthony, I’d like to add the all.7z files as they’re redacted/released and make the mbox archive public, if your are interested.

Random thoughts:
1. That pesky Medieval Warm Period is damned inconvenient.
2. FOIA’s tone is definitely consistent with that of an insider/whistleblower.
3. Tough call on how to release the info and whether to publish the password to all. Personally, I think FOIA’s choice was a very reasonable one considering all of the circumstances.
4. The popcorn is ready and I’m just waiting for some juicy bits to emerge.

From Ed’s email: “It (MWP) is even showing up strongly now in long SH tree-ring series.
>However, there is still the question of how strong this event was in the
>tropics”

Ed, read Willis’s tropical refrigerator piece. The sea temps were around 29-30C tops during the MWP. Wouldn’t it be grand to get some tropical proxies that showed a fairly flat temperature record for a thousand years? Willis, there is a natural piece of research for you to couple with your adventures.

Re FOIA: He gives a lot away here. Says his message may be “disjointed” because of his “linguistic background.”

Says he’s not from the UK, but only that “American politics is alien to him.” Does not deny being an American or a resident-American.

Speculation: he’s either a naturalized or the offspring of naturalized Americans, bi-lingual, who had fleeting contact with the powers that be in Climate Science that resulted in dis-respectful treatment. Perhaps in matters dealing with the IPCC. Speaks of his first “glimpses behind the scenes’ as the beginning of his loss of trust in Climate Science. Could have been an unpleasant dust-up with someone of influence in that sphere.

Could be a Canadian but I don’t think so. Uses phrases like “game-changer” and “over and out” that while not exclusively American are probably used here more often than elsewhere.

Further: uses the word “progressive” disdainfully, which is characteristic of American discourse, although again, not exclusively.

Also: “The price of ‘climate protection’ . . ., ” could refer to Al Gore’s “Alliance for Climate Protection.” When I googled the phrase, it mentioned Gore’s group, but most of the other citations were from California cities who have set up committees for “climate protection.” Again more evidence of an American connection.

I think he’s American, but possibly Canadian.

But again, it’s all speculation.

I apologize in advance if it appears I may be exposing him, but, if I may speculate further, it appears to me that he is being reckless and may not mind being identified, although it will change his life dramatically. He knows he’s a major player in history now and may someday want the attention and rewards that could bring him. After all, and I mean this sincerely, he’s doing this for the poor, the downtrodden, the starving masses world-wide and the children, and may appreciate being celebrated for that. And yet, I still believe there is an element of revenge for shoddy personal treatment involved.

Does the left not usually endorse whistleblowers when it serves their purposes? (Yes, I’m conflating warmism and leftism. Both movements want an absolute state; preferrably a world state.

It’s a safely valid conflation. Consider the colloquial description of the political Watermelon, “Green on the outside, but Red to the core.”

Biopsy the warmist (without anesthetic, please, and using a dull scalpel if you will) and you’ll find precisely the same malignant pathology as you’ll get in carving a slice off any other “Liberal” fascist.

Here are the CG1-all.7z matches. Listed file names and dates occur in both CG1 and all.7z.
CG2-all.7z matches are a bit more problematic, since the .txt filenames are different. There are emails that are present in all 3 caches.

My guess is that FOIA was an outside scientist that had an account at CRU. When I worked at an astronomical institute, there were many scientists from around the world that had accounts on our machines. To get this data, the user would need access to privileged areas. But this is not hard to believe as all that requires is poor management of the computer systems. But from what I have seen at academic research institutions, that is not hard to believe. Security is something that is normally added after a problem and for most admins think that if they have the latest patches, they are fine. Configuration and monitoring are the only way to really lower the risk of security issues. Sorry to ramble.

Much of the Siberian Larch tree ring data from the Yamal peninsula were provided to Keith Briffa by Russian dendrochronologists Stephan Shiyatov and Rashit Hantemirov. In a climategate email from October 1998 Hantemirov writes that there is no evidence of movement of polar timberline in the last century.

However, in 2005 the Canadian Journal of Forest Research published an article based on Shiyatov’s work which stated that a large number of well preserved tree remains can be found 60 to 80 meters above the current tree line, and that the earliest distinct maximum in stand density occurred in the 11th to 13th centuries coincident with the MWP.
See http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/x05-111

Yes…yes…yes! Was it Dr. Ball’s article, or the release of yet another hockey stick paper that forced FOIA to break cover? Three cheers for Dr. Esper as well. His most recent paper is a compelling (albiet somewhat difficult) read. It would seem that Diogenes has finally located an honest man.

ANyone else ever get the fleeting feeling that this could end in some sort of organized violence? I know, I know, it sounds insane. It likely is insane. But the level of anger is such that under the right, repressive circumstances, it seems to me it could happen. I know I’d fight if necessary. And I’m 62 years old.

I must agree with Craig about the defensive attitude to their heresy. Typically even the nicest researchers have a ‘Na, na, de, na, na’ attitude when they get data which refutes an earlier understanding.

First thing I would do is using perl or python or some other scripting language, attempt to filter the larger file against what has already been released and create a new output file with just the delta.

I would see if I could import a copy of the resulting file into a mail reader’s mailbox and see if it would break the messages properly into individual emails. If it can, I would delete the obvious social emails.

Failing that, do it manually but the process I would use would be on the first pass, cull out those that are obviously social emails. The “honey, will you pick up a head of lettuce and a dozen eggs on your way home” or the setting up of a tryst while on a far away conference can probably be culled. Those should be relatively easy to remove and would account for a large number of the emails. The file that results after this pass should be candidates for further scrutiny.

I’m stocking up on popcorn, but have little hope anything will be found that can wake the sleeping. I mean, Climategate 1 and 2 should have woken the dead. It amazes me people are so willing to believe the lame excuses and drink the whitewash.

I can only suppose some people just want to be fooled. In the end, however, Truth will triumph because, after all, it is real, and the alternative isn’t.

Throughout the course of the climategates, I get the distinct impression that the writers involved believe in AGW, but simply cannot assemble data that in fact unequivocally supports it. They appear to be often dealing with data and methods that detract from their set belief. It reminds me very much of the way many Catholic church officials dealt with Copernicus.

As others have noted, if there are emails in which details of personal lives are revealed (possibly lurid or illegal things…it happens), they MUST be withheld. It is one thing to lay waste to a person’s professional credibility, but it would be immoral make personal lives public whether stored/issued on publicly funded server space or not.

My guess is that FOIA is media savvy and gave us this third release because of the scientifically dubious “NSF hockey stick” from Marcott and because the media acted as water carriers for Marcott. FOIA saw this attempt at resurrecting the hockey stick as the perfect occasion for completing the tale of the hockey stick.

Best to release password. Was this not why FOIA released the password?

To allow inspection by a select group of skeptics, will only increase suspicions of manipulations. The greatest safety, for all those involved, is to make it all common knowledge. We need the entire climate community (skeptic and warmist alike) scrutinizing these E-mails. Warmist need to know what they bought into, more than we do. Hope you reconsider and let the chips fall as they may. GK

“…I don’t care if anyone ever learns FOIA’s “truename”, in fact I hope for his sake we never do. But having taken part in the secret identity sweepstakes in the past, it’s still fun to speculate on some of the tidbits he dropped in the letter. …

He needs to cut down on the chat a bit. Stylistic analysis is capable of pinning him down. The Unabomber was caught that way.

If he had an intelligence training he would recognise the need for a good code officer. But, I suppose, he is only up against the Norwich police….

Pokerguy…..Im sure the economic collapse of Western Europe will lead to very nasty violence before very long and Eco issues will evaporate when this happens.

Also bear in mind that the eco obsession reflects only one narrow culture and that, along with its broader culural host is liable to be replaced in a few decades by burgeoning Islamic culture within Western polities. Its hard to estimate what time they will have for eco preoccupations as their main focus tends to be on social, ritual and metaphysical issues.

Mr FOIA you will be reincarnated as a much higher life form. You have passed the biggest test humanity could put in your way. Congratulations on your promotion. There is nothing left here for you to learn.

Though I always imagined Mr FOIA as one of those super secret super high level Chinese hackers, who had exposed to his government how it was all a bunch of crap, and that’s why they just go right on ahead building coal plants like mad, and undercutting wind & solar businesses in America and elsewhere.

Of course I have zero evidence for such a claim, it was just a fantasy that made me laugh…

Bruckner8 says:
March 13, 2013 at 10:15 am“Nothing was changed by CG1 or CG2, so who cares?”
_____________

It should be evident by the many comments and general discourse pertaining to rampant climate fraud worldwide, that some do care and anyone paying attention should also note that CG1&2 did change matters, although not as much as should have changed. That, sadly, characterizes the morbid lack of integrity existing in some divisions of science, politicians and major media.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some people involved in this fraud are now feeling slightly more anxious, which means on the outside, they’ll behave more arrogantly than ever.

“He needs to cut down on the chat a bit. Stylistic analysis is capable of pinning him down. The Unabomber was caught that way.”

I agree. But I also see all kinds of misdirects in his rambling posting. European punctuation and a few non-native-speaker English phrases, plus a few (political, conservative) Americanisms. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge and might’ve even been passed through some kind of filter. On the other hand, my feeling is that he’s U.S. and tried to throw in a few odd things to make it appear that he’s European. Or perhaps he followed the whole Gleick affair and covered his stylistic trail. Heck, the message may be rambling because it’s literally cut-n-pasted from articles on the web.

“First thing I would do is using perl or python or some other scripting language, attempt to filter the larger file against what has already been released and create a new output file with just the delta.”

” At 9:09 AM on 13 March, DirkH had written: Does the left not usually endorse whistleblowers when it serves their purposes? (Yes, I’m conflating warmism and leftism. Both movements want an absolute state; preferrably a world state. ”

Not when it costs them billions. Neither democrat or republican is going to help this guy out because he offended very wealthy people (ie. their owners).

If the economy of a region, a country, a city, etc. deteriorates, what happens among the poorest? Does that usually improve their prospects? No, they will take the hardest hit. No amount of magical climate thinking can turn this one upside-down.

It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.

Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.

1) We call on our fellow Christians to practice creation stewardship out of Biblical conviction, adoration for our Creator, and love for our fellow man—especially the poor.
2) We call on Christian leaders to understand the truth about climate change and embrace Biblical thinking, sound science, and careful economic analysis in creation stewardship.
3) We call on political leaders to adopt policies that protect human liberty, make energy more affordable, and free the poor to rise out of poverty, while abandoning fruitless, indeed harmful policies to control global temperature.

i started to post in the weekend’s open thread that it was about time for the third release… I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t post that guess… ‘they’ would have been on me like they were Roger (Tall Bloke).

To get the remaining scientifically (or otherwise) relevant emails out, I ask you to pass this on to any motivated and responsible individuals who could volunteer some time to sift through the material for eventual release.

I’m guessing you already have a goodly list of ‘motivated and responsible individuals’ and aren’t looking for further volunteers? If this is not the case and you’re short handed, I’d be glad to volunteer to help. Not that you have any basis to know I’m a responsible individual though. ~shrug~

It may be a response to the Marcott paper, but also a number of other things. Obama’z Inaugural, in which he promised renewed efforts, seemed tailored for the young. There have been new appointments to Energy and EPA. And (strictly based on observation), I foresee a second-generation – a catastrophist “echo” – of young folks exploiting the administration’s numerous educational grants, taking positions in newly-created fields of environmental (AGW) science, writing curriculum for or teaching the new global economy, or mouthing the latest platitudes favoring anti-western, new-world order based on the concept of a liberal leviathan. The drumbeat for renewables will continue, but they will continue to hamper the oil and gas industry at their own peril. A lot of senate seats are in the air in 2014.

Yet, these ones you see the need to protect from their own shallow lives re: private e-mails with bad habits shown. They are holding themselves out a smart people of great knowledge. They all should know e-mails are never secure.

In fact the whole sorry world they live in should be seen by all.

They come to the court of public opinion with dirty hands, thus should be treated as such.

Do tell your family just in case the/some goverment gets on you and you do not come home from work one day.

elmer 9:30:
“I smell another video, need a new catchphrase though.”
Elmer, if you are familiar with the song “Days” by the Kinks (and Kirsty McColl) you could start it off:
“Thank you F O I A,
You’ve really made all of our days, believe me.”

Sun Spot says:
March 13, 2013 at 9:46 am
Due to the complicity of the M.S.M. in the cAGW media meme they will NOT report on this. Censorship by guilt association and left wing anti-science bias.

Actually, the “Ministry of Truth” is all inclusive. Fauxnews is not covering this, as an example. It looks like the net is our only salvation as all media sources sing the from the same hymn book, and in MoT hymn book you won’t even get “Move along, nothing to see here….” for this seismic story.

M. Mann prolonged paradox, of having to: publicly promote and BELIEVE in his own hockey stick, when the scientist part, of himself, knows it to be nonsense… has caused his mind to form a psychological schism. When he goes to sleep at night, his alter-ego rises and commences his internet activities. M. Mann IS FOIA… He just doesn’t know it. /snark GK

Dr. FOIA, thank you! I can only express my deepest respect for your motivations. I hope this release has the effects you intend – time for the climate zombie to be burned into the final state of annihilation.

I am entirely convinced that Climategate 1.0 had an instant chilling effect on the warmist pseudoscientific rhetoric. Its effects reverberated around Copenhagen and finally put the alarmists on the defensive. Unfortunately, modern intellectual and political elites have scant regard for the truth. They continue to swaddle themselves in carbon dioxide fear-mongering, convinced this will keep them warm, whilst those of us on the outside can see they are naked. But the media look the other way, and too many who see the truth are still afraid to speak up.

Greta news! Thank you Mr. FOIA, thank you Anthony, and everyone esle involved in this release.

Regarding the identity of Mr FOIA, I conclude that “… although he may have studied with an expert dialectitian and grammarian, I can tell that he was born – Hungarian! Not only Hungarian, but of royal blood.” -with apologies to G.B. Shaw and Lerner

FOIA is a true, modern hero, a trait which becomes rarer each passing year. Thank you, Sir!

To those speculating on his identity based on periods, commas, and English/American idioms – if I were he, I would have adopted some other region’s forms for the express purpose of leading the hounds up a blind alley.

The usual suspects will most likely howl about how anything posted from the stash is cherry picked or even fabricated unless the password is released and the material becomes “open source”. So protecting the guilty from the consequences of their own ill deeds will not cut it in the long run.

Is the period – rather than comma – a solely British numeric convention? Or is it used elsewhere?

The positional swap of the point and comma was a continental Europe practice back in the day of typewritten documents. It was considered easier to read, and in long columns of figures, not necessarily accurately aligned, it actually was.. From memory about the beginning of the ‘sixties British Banks and others started to adopt the practice for convenience rather than by diktat but only for typewritten documents. Somewhere around the mid ‘sixties South Africa decimalised its currency and their decision makers assumed that banking practice was the accepted way of doing things. They advised people to write their cheques with a comma separating rands from cents. At the same time their schoolchildren were instructed to pronounce the word ‘comma’ where one would otherwise say ‘point’. In Rhodesia at the time we thought it was hilarious to hear a South African say that he lived ‘four comma six kilometers from the post office”.
We laughed too soon. When Rhodesia decimalised its currency in February 1970 they followed the excruciating example of their southern neighbours. I had to explain to my kids at the time that in our house we spoke English and that within its confines the pronunciation of ‘comma’ was banned. To this day I mentally cringe when I hear someone announce a measurement as ‘nine comma eight’ or some such. .. .

For everyone speculating about clues to FOIA’s identity, bear in mind that he’s had plenty of time to write that covering email and is clearly a pretty smart cookie. Assuming he’d rather remain anonymous, any clues are quite likely to have been planted, like the dinosaur bones, to fool the archeaologists ;)

As for not putting the password in the wild, that’s absolutely right. The previous releases gave unintentional access to some scientists’ accounts with journals (thanks to the journals’ lax security). Fortunately those who noticed first alerted the scientists involved rather than making it public knowledge. If we’d like to maintain the moral high ground, vetting any released emails to avoid similar mistakes is absolutely essential!

I guess that many of the climate-oriented TRF readers have spent a long time – perhaps many hours – by attempts to guess the password. That was hopeless, we know today, because the password is an extremely long sequence of gibberish characters.

It is up to the recipients of the password to take this forward. I hope FOIA has chosen wisely, because with the password goes the responsibility to redact and delete all of the stuff that is personal and irrelevant to the climate issue. There must be some way to coordinate a systematic assessment and filtering of all the emails but that is a massive task.

Indiscriminate publication of emails containing information about personal/family matters would be devastating to the people concerned and would be siezed upon by critics to damage the heroic actions of FOIA.

Having said that, I hope that the emails do expose the wrongdoings of people in governments, NGOs, alarmist organisations and cheerleaders such as the BBC.

Well, Mr. FOIA isn’t Keith Briffa. F writes English with a completely American idiom. His syntax also has none of the subtle errors that betray a foreign first language. All-in-all, he’s a native American speaker.

An interesting set of search terms would be the key journalists that were in their pockets at the time to show how “objective” their reporting was (not). ie, they were acting as pr agents for alarm. also for emails to/from people in greenpeace etc re IPCC.

Here are the CG1-all.7z matches. Listed file names and dates occur in both CG1 and all.7z.
CG2-all.7z matches are a bit more problematic, since the .txt filenames are different. There are emails that are present in all 3 caches.

Perhaps this should go to “tips”, but maybe it would be a good idea to set up a sticky post or even another blog site where those who have the password can put up their discoveries/insights and comments from those who don’t have the password (such as myself) are blocked but those (such as myself) can see still what’s going on? Sort of a “central hub” for the sorting and sifting.

I would suggest that FOIA’s native language might be revealed in his expression, “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor.” This awkwardness of this expression in English indicates it is a literal translation from a different language. (I live in a Spanish speaking country and am frequently guilty of literal translations!) Does anyone recognize FOIA’s expression, but used in a different language?

I figure if I don’t comment soon, I’ll have no shot at the mug. So I’ll take this opportunity to say I have never seen this kind of uncommon valor for the good of so many ever in my forty plus years on this planet. Good show, FOIA. May you stay safe and reap the rewards you so deserve for your actions.

PointmanYou Sir, have given great service and you’ve done it uncommonly well. Look after yourself, time to rest now.

Indeed (FOIA). Get yourself out of ‘Dodge’ and enjoy your ‘retirement’. Wipe the drives, those that might possibly hold an unencrypted copy of ‘all’, and dump them in the ln the local river/canal. Chill out and talk to nobody about it.

Someone is going to have to do the dirty work of encorporating all three files, eliminating the duplication, and going through the resulting mess line for line to find the necessary parts to end this charade posing as “science”. That’s going to be a long, drawn-out, time-consuming process. I hope someone is up to it.

Canadians and Australians often use US spelling. The tone seems culturally British.

IF this missive was not written as camouflage–which it would be if the hacker were Chinese, for instance–then it suggests FOIA was someone conversant in climatology, at least to the extent of having taken courses in it. That would have been necessary to sort out the first release. Perhaps a worker in the IT department.

Mr FOIA, we are all indebted to you. Many in the position you found yourself in would not have acted with moral fortitude you displayed. You are a rare individual and a truly great. I also think you have achieved much more than you realize. Climategate 1 ripped open a hole that could not be mended and really turned things around. The scam would have come apart anyway, but much slower and with greater suffering everywhere. You are a hero. The whole world owes you so much.

Now if only someone would follow FOIA’s lead and get Hansen and company’s emails from NASA GISS (or wherever they hide them). Unredacted emails from the EPA (or wherever they hide them)would be nice too.

Sounds like FOIA might be an insider. If he was a hacker he would be unconcerned about “sensitive personal” emails. As an outsider, I don’t think Mann et. al. deserve any such protection, as shame is likely all the punishment that they will receive for their horrendous misconduct and scientific fraud..

My 2 cents worth…it’s a man in his late 50s or early 60s who has a scientific background and was fed up with the current state of climate science. The carefully worded and final release is to be done with it on one hand and cover his tracks on the other. Could easily be American, British or Canadian. Note the correct use of whom.

Sounds like FOIA might be an insider. If he was just some hacker he would not be at all concerned about emails that were ‘personally sensitive’.

Personally, as an outsider, I am unconcerned with protecting Mann et al, as I fell confident that any fallout from these emails is likely the only punishment that they will receive for their horrendous behavior and scientific misconduct.

This basically confirms the UK police view that it was a single overseas hacker operating through a Russian server. The covering note has clearly been machine translated from some other language. Let’s see if anything more damning can be found than the semantics of the word “trick”.

to be a bit careful about ‘sensitive or socially damaging’ emails, although it isn’t clear what FOIA has in mind by that. If things that are truly personal, I would be in favor of keeping them private

I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here. These theiving, cheating a$$oles have no right to privacy, mercy or any other human sympathetic emotion. You are foregetting the number of people that have DIED as a result of enrgy policy predicated on their crap science. 30000 in the UK alone this winter an many more to come as coal stations switch to wood and windmills suck in ever more funding subsidies. EXSPOSE EVERYTHING they are criminals.

I like all the suggestions, keep them coming.
I found this email that seems pretty damning is this an old one?
Phil to Mike
“Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”http://di2.nu/foia/1107454306.txt

Could the “papal plural” be either a reference to the “royal we” or
perhaps the fact that once the new pope is elected, there will be two for a while?
As regards the “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor”, maybe it’s a reference to
that book titlled “Holes” where kids were given the busywork task of digging
and filling holes (as punishment, if I recall correctly).
In any case, many thanks to FOIA for bringing the truth out, and to those
who will be likely working long hours and days sifting through that output.
Good to see that integrity is still around in this day and age! (and yes,
whistleblowers show not only integrity, but bravery as well).

I would use “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor” myself, I’ve used the concept in my book Fundanomics regarding make-work projects (it’s not about jobs, per se). I don’t think it’s a clue to who Mr. FOIA is.

No password but a bitcoin address? Mr FOIA can go f*ck himself. What’s the point of those emails being out there if there is a campaign to have only selected people see them? Are you going to be the high and mighty ones to release the truth to us great unwashed?

You really, really, really need to learn to read. The passage is a tongue-in-cheek joke about where Big Oil can send Mr. FOIA’s share of the conspiracy money.

The close-held nature of the password is simply because there is considerable potential for accidental damage that is inappropriate. Anthony and others are actually more careful than Mr. FOIA. They actually redact the email addresses, even though those addresses may be potential evidence of missuse of public (computers) facilities. FOIA’s concerns are directed at considerably more personal issues. Possibly Briffa’s illness is discussed in detail that would never should be public for instance. Social problems to be avoided suggest that he might not want to trigger divorces, inadvertently out married gays, etc. There’s no reason at all that sort of information should come out.

It seems more clear that FOIA is effectively a whistle blower. He (actually “they”) clearly had access to the emails. It is notable that the crew has apparently broken up since he says that he’s now just one person and can no longer employ the papal “I”. Also the use of a comma as a decimal separator excludes all Anglophone countries but South Africa, so unless he’s dissembling, he really isn’t British or American. There was evidence in some of the earlier communications with CG1 and CG2 that a mixed group – both Anglophone and non-Anglophone were involved. Apparently this no longer the case.

I would use “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor” myself, I’ve used the concept in my book Fundanomics regarding make-work projects (it’s not about jobs, per se). I don’t think it’s a clue to who Mr. FOIA is.

Oh, and it’s not me.

Really.
—————
~suspicious stare~
…
well, you said me and not us, so. I guess you’re off the hook.

Don’t leave town though Dr. Spencer, we might have more questions for you.
/sarc :p

MikeP
Not Ukrainian.
My guess is originally East coast USA, with later overseas education, most probably a Scandinavian country (some of the word order.) Embassy brat? Military brat?
He/She has mastered the mysteries of the possessive contraction that Americans use that are avoided by non native speakers.
Having said that, the language is probably very obfuscated for good reason.

Joseph E Postma says:
March 13, 2013 at 7:46 am
Congrats to Tim Ball for his article requesting this to be done, and if it created this outcome! Wonderful!
____________________________________________________

I’m guessing it was the ludicrous graph in Marcott et al. that was the tipping point.

I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here. These theiving, cheating a$$oles have no right to privacy, mercy or any other human sympathetic emotion. You are foregetting the number of people that have DIED as a result of enrgy policy predicated on their crap science. 30000 in the UK alone this winter an many more to come as coal stations switch to wood and windmills suck in ever more funding subsidies. EXSPOSE EVERYTHING they are criminals.
——————————————————————————————————————–

What of possible harm to people NOT involved who happen to be mentioned? In 220k emails there’s a good chance there will be some; Does your need for blood extend to colateral damage that might be avoided by releasing it this way?

“USA politics is alien to me, neither am I from the UK. There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere.”

Written by someone who was at length or totally educated in an English speaking country. It FLOWS far too well for it to be otherwise. Knowing the email would be analysed to death he / she has had plenty of time to throw in red herrings and probably had fun doing so.

Use US spell-check in part and for numbers use points rather then commas – i can hear the chuckles. I for one appreciate the humour or should that be humor and wish him / her a long, happy and anonymous life.

I am going to have a climategate 3.0 party tonight. I can help with awk/sed/perl/grep/egrep redacting of such things as emails addresses but many can do that. I believe something like this i
egrep -ho “[[:graph:]]+@[[:graph:]]+”
works well finding lines but not redacting.

I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here. These theiving, cheating a$$oles have no right to privacy, mercy or any other human sympathetic emotion. You are foregetting the number of people that have DIED as a result of enrgy policy predicated on their crap science. 30000 in the UK alone this winter an many more to come as coal stations switch to wood and windmills suck in ever more funding subsidies. EXSPOSE EVERYTHING they are criminals.

“They” might be criminals, but are their families, their friends, passing acquaintances, doctors, dentists, proctologists …?? Besides, being opinionated to the point of stupidity is not criminal anywhere, just stupid, and potentially a Darwinian handicap. The criminals are those who set policies without considering consequences, or without really asking for genuine alternatives or contrary opinion.

I wouldn’t put too much effort into analyzing the text of that letter. If I wanted to obscure my origins, I might do something like this:

Taking Anthony’s first paragraph:

A number of climate skeptic bloggers (myself included) have received this message yesterday. While I had planned to defer announcing this until a reasonable scan could be completed, some other bloggers have let the cat out of the bag. I provide this introductory email sent by “FOIA” without editing or comment. I do have one email, which I found quite humorous, which I will add at the end so that our friends know that this is valid.

Using Google Translate to translate it into French, then back into English gives:

A number of bloggers climate skeptics (including me) have received this message yesterday. While I had planned to postpone the announcement until a reasonable analysis to be completed, some other bloggers have let the cat out of the bag. I give this introductory message sent by “FOIA” without editing or commentary. I have an email that I found very funny, I’ll add it to the end, so that our friends know that this is true.

Robert of Ottawa says:
March 13, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Rogerknights, it was written in great haste. He refers toa new Pope, nly just announced a couple of hours ago … But he at least didn’t mention the score of Arsenal against Munich
=======================================================================

Yes – but Arsenal haven’t had a real chance since they scored! And they have 18 minutes left in which to score two goals to win.

My guess is that the main purpose of the bitcoin address is to give FOIA a way of unambiguously identifying himself should he wish to do so in the perhaps not too distant future. Otherwise with the password released and all emails out there any fool could claim to be FOIA.

Think about this carefully. Politicians are, in the main, idiots. They have a very limited education usually in the arts (history, politics, art etc) and rely totally on their ‘advisors’ for guidance. Their advisors are the government organisations such as NWS, NASA, NOAA, UK Met off, CRU and their chief scientists. Soooooo, who is to blame ?? It’s a great big circle of money. The government feeds our money to thier advisors and their friends in order to keep the circle going. That’s why oblarny has spent so much money on failed greenery. It came back to him in the election campagne. You see? Hang the lot of them.

“the password is an extremely long sequence of gibberish characters”
How long? It could be a simple word or phrase passed to an hashing algorith (md5 for example). That way he could still produce it from memory if needed. It’s what I would have done.

As a global warming skeptic I find it quite funny how some of the people here defend the censorship and it being restricted to only a select few. Would this be okay if it was the warmists who hid and censored info?? Seems like the skeptic community is full of hypocrites as well.. :(

REPLY: Oh, please. At some point I have no doubt that the file will be released, but given the size, we simply want to make sure there’s no information in it that is a of a personal, non-FOIA nature, that could damage somebody related or non related to the issue. CG1 and CG2 were manageable size wise, this one is a whole different animal. If you can scan all 220,000 emails and pronounce it clean in less than 24 hours, please present your plan. Otherwise, I suggest you shove your concerns up the bodily orifice of your choice until such time the work can be completed and it can be ensured that unintended consequences don’t happen – Anthony Watts

Does your need for blood extend to collateral damage that might be avoided by releasing it this way?

YES! You don’t think the blood of all those people that have died wondering whether to heat or eat is important or are you like Dr Shipman and think of them as old and useless. Of course, you probably also forgot that there are young babes and children among the bodies at the morgue but hey, they are less important than protecting the families and friends of people who have become millionaires from the scam that killed them.

Pathetic !!! It’s why FOIA released the info. Because the poor and helpless were being killed by these [activists].

Interesting. The damage control pseudo-humans dispatched by troll central are arriving. The sad thing is, most of them are paid a wage nowadays. The true believers have moved on to reality TV or something even more insubstantial.

What the %*^! are you people doing?
———
I understand the sentiment, but soberly considered I wouldn’t sweat it. We aren’t going to figure out who FOIA is this way. Even if somebody stumbled onto it by chance there’s no verification method, it’d be just another leaf on a yard full of speculation.

My guess is that the main purpose of the bitcoin address is to give FOIA a way of unambiguously identifying himself should he wish to do so in the perhaps not too distant future. Otherwise with the password released and all emails out there any fool could claim to be FOIA.

Ian, read passage again, this time with your sense of humour engaged. The author is joking about where money from Big Oil can be sent.

Mr FOIA begins by announcing he wishes to clear up some speculations,
and immediately launches a thousand new speculations :-)

*Mr* FOIA (enough with the He/She already) says he is not from the UK, that rules out
England, Wales, Scotland.
He claims a linguistic background AND demonstrates a wry, understated sense of humour, that
rules out the Americans.
He presents his decision making within the context of personal moral conduct, that
rules out the French.
He writing and reasoning is cool and detached, that rules out the PIGS, (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain)
He appears to genuinely care, that rules out the Swiss.
He continues to take risks, that rules out the Scandinavians.
He counts himself a Western man, that rules out much of the rest.

An Irishman? (“forsees his death” — he did say career developments…) I think not.
An Antipodean/Canadian? There’s that linguistic thing again, so no.
By eliminating the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is that our boy is:
South African — Vat Hom, Fluffy! Skrik vir niks boet!

FOIA ! Someone once said that true courage is that virtue which champions the cause of right. Regardless of how this story develops further, your effort is much appreciated by all who read this blog regularly, me included.

“It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.”

It might be helpful to see what the cost for electrical energy in CA will be as we strive to meet our RES and AB 32 goals:

My thoughts entirely, although I am more of the “what good will it do” than the “what harm could it do” persuasion.

I doubt any of the linguistic analysis will help much as I am sure it was deliberately obfuscated and I see that the headers from the email have been stripped from everyone who has published this, which is probably the best way to follow someone. All of our discussion is really feeding the conspiracy trolls. I guess the only real advantage to knowing is to clear up the leak vs hack question and I don’t see much mileage in that anymore

At the same time, until we get to see the contents, there is not a lot of most of us to do but speculate on the identify of FOIA. I see that we are well over 200 comments on this thread, plus some hundreds on Climate Audit and Bishop Hill – proof that this little corner of the blogosphere is excited, but we don’t yet know what about! I guess it is too much to ask people to calm down a bit and wait for the details, but – really – the devil is in the details and it will take time to get those details.

I understand the sentiment, but such action would have the counterproductive effect of chilling scientific inquiry even by legitimate scientists with legitimate concerns.

There were numerous instances of eliminationist rhetoric coming from the other side not so long ago. To defeat an enemy, it is crucial that you do not come to emulate him. If you wish to institute the same outrages, just under different masters, then what, precisely, are you fighting for?

It’s looking a bit like CSI forensics on this site to try and identify FOIA. Just to annoy everyone I think I have worked it out, if I am correct I think others will too!
If anyone thinks they know please leave it to FOIA to ‘out’ himself.

Stephen Richards says:
March 13, 2013 at 2:27 pm
…
Think about this carefully. Politicians are, in the main, idiots. They have a very limited education usually in the arts (history, politics, art etc) and rely totally on their ‘advisors’ for guidance. Their advisors are the government organisations such as NWS, NASA, NOAA, UK Met off, CRU and their chief scientists. Soooooo, who is to blame ?? It’s a great big circle of money. The government feeds our money to thier advisors and their friends in order to keep the circle going. That’s why oblarny has spent so much money on failed greenery. It came back to him in the election campagne. You see? Hang the lot of them.

This reasoning, I use the word with some trepidation, is akin to that used in the Albigensian Crusade, “Kill them all, For the Lord knows them that are His.” In short, I have thought about it quite carefully. I suggest letting the hormonal reaction subside and then carefully decide whether you are on the side of liberty, or of scorched earth. Personally, I go for liberty.

BTW, money would be far less of an issue if there weren’t a concerted effort to convince the population that value is somehow a limited commodity. Even a ditch-digger by the simple act of wielding a shovel creates new wealth if he digs a useful ditch. That happens to be why the US had no central bank in the original constitution and why the government was given sole right to coin money. You want to really get your hormones excited research “fractional reserve.” The damage done by this climate silliness is miniscule in comparison.

@Espen –
The omission of articles might also reflect practice in the Scandinavian languages and Romanian and Bulgarian, all of which suffix the definite article to the noun – where it would more easily be lost in translation. If I had to hazard a guess as to FOIA’s nationality, it would be one of these (won’t be more specific in the interest of not clueing in the alarmies to his/her location)

If there aren’t too many people who hold the password (it seems like only a handful), and if there is any risk of the data being “put back in the bottle” by people who can “get to” those few holders of the password, I suggest releasing the password NOW as another encrypted text. It would be an insurance policy that if any strong arm tactics are used against any of the other holders, immediate release of all.7z is guaranteed.

Don’t kid around with this. There really are $Trillions at stake here, and there are some incredibly huge investors in the Climate Industrial Complex that don’t want to see their stock crash. They are willing to commit millions of people to poverty and an early death, and do so without batting an eye. They have spent decades engineering the “supporting documentation” for the legalized theft that is a CO2 tax, and are on the cusp of realizing their dreams of limitless wealth while making the rest of us “sustainable”. Do you really think they give a rat’s ass about any of you? They want to make an example of someone. Insure yourself.

At 11:56 AM on 13 March, we had Mark Bofill quoting Lubos Motl as saying:

“I guess that many of the climate-oriented TRF readers have spent a long time – perhaps many hours – by attempts to guess the password. That was hopeless, we know today, because the password is an extremely long sequence of gibberish characters.”

FOIA is obviously quite literate. And quite familiar with American figures of speech. Either that, or FOIA has a handy editor on whom he/she calls before final posting of these important messages.

I sincerely doubt that the 200.000 expression has a typo. Considering the high level of literacy expressed in the message, it’s not likely that FOIA would have slipped up like that.

I have formulated some specific ideas about who FOIA might be, based on the comments about timing, etc. I am trying to restrain myself from sharing them. I will make this general observation, though: FOIA appears to be that rare thing – a technically-savvy IT insider who at the same time has very good communication skills. (/rim shot)

I would be willing to wager that FOIA is having great fun reading all the comments regarding CG3. I wouldn’t be surprised that he comments on the popular climate blogs and after a time came to the conclusion that the people he gave the password to could be trusted to edit out the personal stuff saving him countless hours.
It’s entertaining to guess his identity since we are all excited about the info that is coming..there are already hundreds of comments without even one new email. Imagine if s/he was found out, how could s/he ever down all the drinks that would come his way! Sit back, relax and enjoy the show!

In the CG1 release there was a blog post from the source, the source self-identified as ‘we’.

In the CG2 release there was a message from the source, the source self-identified as ‘we’.

The CG3 release has an email from the source, the source self-identified as ‘I” and had these associated words,

Mr FOIA said,

Indeed, it’s singular “I” this time. After certain career developments I can no longer use the papal plural ;-)

Which of those three CG release communications can be given the most credibility? Does the most credibility belong the two ‘we’ communications or to the one “I” communication . . . or are all three equally credible even given the ‘we’ / ‘I’ contradiction?

There is an element of indirection or even misdirection amongst the climategate releases.

Anthony:
Should Chris Horn of CEI get a glimpse into the raw file? I could be wrong, but I think he’d respect privacy and personal concerns.

I’d suggest prosecutors too, but that’s over the top; still it is tempting to let Representative Issa start chewing big chunks of CAGW pseudo science. Maybe later when categories of unsavory CAGW actions are established!

>I do
>find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event
>to be grossly premature and probably wrong. Kind of like Mark Twain’s
>commment that accounts of his death were greatly exaggerated.
-Ed Cook-

Lol. Suck it up Mikey

Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless.
A good example is Naomi Oreskes work.
-Tom Wigley

The text reads like a very well educated non-native English speaker. I suspect from what he said that he worked inside CRU for some time, and for whatever reason had the appropriate access. Perhaps he had a temporary job working with IT or something similar. Maybe contract work.

I hope there aren’t any legal ramifications to the forthcoming trickle of “skeptic approved” e-mails. Manually filtering and deciding what should and shouldn’t be kept private is taking a much more active role in something that is still being treated as a serious crime. Call me paranoid, but I sense a trap.

It is fun and interesting to speculate about the identity of FOIA but what counts, after all is said and done, are the effects of the disclosures.
For all we know it is a group in some national shadow agency looking out for their national long term interests.

Low access and insufficient capacity – Some 24 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity versus 40 percent in other low income countries. Excluding South Africa, the entire installed generation capacity of sub-Saharan Africa is only 28 Gigawatts, equivalent to that of Argentina.

Poor reliability – African manufacturing enterprises experience power outages on average 56 days per year. As a result, firms lose 6 percent of sales revenues in the informal sector. Where back-up generation is limited, losses can be as high as 20 percent.

High costs – Power tariffs in most parts of the developing world fall in the range of US$0.04 to US$0.08 per kilowatt-hour. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the average tariff is US$0.13 per kilowatt-hour. In countries dependent on diesel-based systems, tariffs are higher still. Given poor reliability, many firms operate their own diesel generators at two to three times the cost with attendant environmental costs.

Imagine in your home town if 3 out of 4 people got back home from work to no electricity. None. This is what the greens want for you. Can you live like this? FOIA knows the low down.

Re Michael Smith………..I second that, after years of protesting the weight of these issues everyone suddenly seems to be exhibiting a avery casual attitude. Lets be frank, if only a few people have access to this information, your lives are now at risk.

For whatever reasons the following countries have low access to electricity, my point is that comfortable, watermelon greens want to make access to electricity even more difficult for the following countries.

o.2 and if they’d just put the ball in the box…! Anyway, FOIA has to be quite educated in Climate and has to see the significance of what he was reading. He has to have understood that the proceedings he was reading about was a deviation from the norm. Not easy if you are not highly versed in the subject. He has to know that the ‘Science’ he was about to release was a deviation from the normal method of Science (ie unpublished) , and that the content was not reflected in the mainstream accounting of the Climate Science as published in the public domain He knew it was a bombshell hence the timing before Copenhagen. He’s mature as he didn’t just release it when he first came into the possession of them but waited for the proper, most effective time to do it. . He knows his way around the computer world hence using a Russian server to dump on (without leaving tracks). Surely such a manoever would be logged by GCHQ if it came from within the UK, He’s still alive and he’s still at large. I personally think the huddle convened at Copenhagen between the leaders of the western world lead by O’Bama likely covered the fact that the game was up and no signing would take place. If true; he’s running from MI-5 and US security…..derailing the de-industrialization of the western world and then re-industrialization using “green’ technology was a key idea of O’Bama in tackling the unemployment issue. They don’t take triffling lying down. (So…my guess is it’s the Dos Equis guy: Stay thirsty my friends!!!)
FOIA should reveal himself to Steve and Anthony incase things turn nasty.

Sorry, but I agree that the password being ‘held’ by a select few seems rather pointless – a crowdsourcing dissection of the emails will be a lot quicker. On the personal info/redaction front – I think most people would realise if something was clearly ‘personal’ – but otherwise, if it contains climate science, and certainly climate science paid for with public funds – as far as I’m concerned it is fair game! (Ok, if there were personal type adenda, such as ‘happy birthday’, or ‘how did the jaunt with the bird you met at the conference go’ – one might want to redact that, but is that really likely?)

Apart from anything else, I’m pissed off that I now have to wait some time before knowing (some of) what is in there, and even longer if only a few people are sifting them. Again, it seems unlikely that any one (or few people) could go through such emails in anytime under a few solid weeks or months of hard reading – and I would defy anyone to individually read and digest the importance of each of 200000 emails and then categorize them, etc, without pulling their hair out, getting confused, getting bored – and ultimately taking a heck of a long time about it!

I also agree that the password should be encrypted and placed in safe storage against the ‘dark forces’ of guv’ment intervention!

I see TB has obtained a copy – quite rightly in my opinion – but I hope it is only a matter of time before someone decides to realease the password publicly.

One other thing – the story will be dead in the water, or at least much less effective in the media eyes, if it is released in small dribs and drabs over the many weeks to follow. Joe Ordinary gets bored with such things rather quickly!

After a series of empirical experiments last year I found that AGW was a physical impossibility. The reason is that radiative gases are critical to continued convective circulation below the tropopause. There is some evidence from the 2010 attack on the Makarieva Et.al. discussion paper that some such as N. Stokes, J. Shore, J. Halpern and others knew of the problem with the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. I would ask those who have the pass code to look for evidence in Climategate3 of others with prior knowledge of the problem. In the period 1999-2005 a series of papers were produced on the theme of “high altitude ice clouds cause warming”. Below is a typical abstract –

“Abstract. – We have investigated the sensitivity of the intensity of convective activity and atmospheric radiative cooling to radiatively thick upper-tropospheric clouds using a new version of the Colorado State University General Circulation Model. The model includes a bulk cloud microphysics scheme to predict the formation of cloud water, cloud ice, rain, and snow. The cloud optical properties are interactive and dependent upon
the cloud water and cloud ice paths. We find that the formation of a persistent upper tropospheric cloud ice shield leads to decreased atmospheric radiative cooling and increased static stability. Convective activity is then strongly suppressed. In this way, upper-tropospheric clouds act as regulator so f the global hydrologic cycle, and provide a negative feedback between atmospheric radiative cooling and convective activity.”

Basically the mechanism that was being proposed is the suppression of cooling by radiation at altitude causing reduced convective circulation. I have a suspicion, as yet without firm foundation, that the disappearance of such papers from mainstream AGW science was due to the fact they dealt with the critical role of radiative gases in convective circulation. I would ask any with the pass code to search for references and “Team” responses to such papers. I would like to establish a date at which IPCC contributors first knew of the issue.

I hope FOIA manages to focus people’s minds more on the real problems facing vast swathes of humanity instead of wetting pants over the phantom ‘problem’ of slight temp rise since LIA.

Globally, diarrhoea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths are due to a lack of access to sanitation facilities, together with inadequate availability of water for hygiene and unsafe drinking water.
Source: JMP

About 3.3 billion people – half of the world’s population – are at risk of malaria. In 2010, there were about 216 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty range of 149 million to 274 million) and an estimated 655 000 malaria deaths
Source: WHO

Dub says: March 13, 2013 at 12:09 pm . . . . .I would suggest that FOIA’s native language might be revealed in his expression, “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor.” This awkwardness
Rather, the command of the hyphen indicates both high-order English comprehension and composition.

I’ve been stewing on this for a few hours now. I’m troubled by the idea that Anthony and others are trying to clean up the files prior to posting them. I think you should consult a lawyer prior to doing this. It’s unlikely that you will be able to do a complete job, and it strikes me that a poor attempt at redaction could put you in more legal jeopardy than no attempt at all. I suspect your safest path at this point is to publish the password and to not publish the emails.

The current justice department won’t prosecute Gleick but I suspect they won’t hesitate to go after climate dissidents for thought crimes. Best to be safe here and consult a lawyer.

Does your need for blood extend to collateral damage that might be avoided by releasing it this way?

YES! You don’t think the blood of all those people that have died wondering whether to heat or eat is important or are you like Dr Shipman and think of them as old and useless. Of course, you probably also forgot that there are young babes and children among the bodies at the morgue but hey, they are less important than protecting the families and friends of people who have become millionaires from the scam that killed them.

Pathetic !!! It’s why FOIA released the info. Because the poor and helpless were being killed by these [activists].
———————————————————————————————————————-

Thank you for nailing your idealogical / moral colours to the mast.

I’m well aware of the effects of climate policy but fail to see how causing harm to possible innocents caught up in these emails would do anything to redress that other than satisfy some immature desire to wreak havok in revenge. Kinda like if some gang was terrorising your neighbourhood and the local vigilantes beat the living cr*p out of you (who happened to be waking home innocently) one dark night because they wanted to send a message. You may be happy for that to happen, I certainly wouldn’t be (not even to you).

Next time, in the interest of all the sincere and decent people working hard to let the truth win, please choose someone else’s mast because they WILL be tarred by association with your views.

Bill Parsons. A period or full-stop has never been used in Britain to write big numbers. Where did you get that idea from ? We use a gap officially as in’ 120 000.’ Though most people stick to the traditional comma as in ‘120,000’

As a global warming skeptic I find it quite funny how some of the people here defend the censorship and it being restricted to only a select few. Would this be okay if it was the warmists who hid and censored info?? Seems like the skeptic community is full of hypocrites as well.. :(

How many lawsuits could YOU handle if any of the information in the files that was released on your website led to personal injury, damage, or harassment lawsuits of some kind?

As exciting and promising as this is, we need to continue to fight the good fight in the public eye. And on that topic, I am drafting a complaint to the Broadcast Standards Authority about a particularly egregious piece of programming and I would appreciate some help with the data, if you can easily put me in the right direction. Look on Bishop Hill under Discussion for my topic. Thanks

I’ve been stewing on this for a few hours now. I’m troubled by the idea that Anthony and others are trying to clean up the files prior to posting them. I think you should consult a lawyer prior to doing this. It’s unlikely that you will be able to do a complete job, and it strikes me that a poor attempt at redaction could put you in more legal jeopardy than no attempt at all. I suspect your safest path at this point is to publish the password and to not publish the emails.

The current justice department won’t prosecute Gleick but I suspect they won’t hesitate to go after climate dissidents for thought crimes. Best to be safe here and consult a lawyer.

– – – – – – – –

Anthony,

I think Mpaul’s comment is important. It looks like he is right; right in all of his thinking.

If you haven’t previously done so, then I think you should get some legal advice. If you need contributions donated to do that, let us know.

Ken Harvey says:
March 13, 2013 at 11:48 am
————————————-
Ken – If you look at the Wikipedia page concerning the “decimal mark” the countries listed that currently use the “point” are generally British Commonwealth or past British colonies. Zimbabwe is listed as using the point while South Africa (and most of Europe) seem to use the comma.

As one that started life with South African pounds, shillings and pence and converted to the SA decimal system in elementary school, experienced university with a solid SI system, then spent several years in the UK where adopting the metric system was a hard fought battle, I now live in the US and I’m BACK to the language of my childhood – good old pounds and ounces.

Password was banqueted to this person of the ultimate trust, to be released at a suitable moment.
Concerned about poor, newborn’s future life. millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury.
Not British or American, not native English speaker, dislikes dominance of Anglo-Saxon (French or German, I’ll go for German)
Can’t be touched by law.
And final clueAfter certain career developments I can no longer use the papal plural
Ratzinger ?
Couldn’t do it while in the office, had to resign first.

I don’t know what impelled FOIA’s release, but it is opportune. I have been appalled by the reversion to insane “climate change” talk at the highest levels of the US government: the President, the new Secretary of State, and some admiral out at Pacific Command who claims “climate change” is the biggest threat we face (bigger than China?!). Clearly there is a push on to return global alarmism to center stage. Why? Maybe to justify a hefty carbon tax? Maybe to turn over the whole blinking economy to the UN? I don’t know, but it makes no sense.

I sure hope there’s a Piltdown Man bone in there that will convince even the brain-dead left-wing media that the whole damned thing is a hoax. If not, it’s going to be a scary time.

All these emails being sent around the internet with the password are probably not encrypted so the password is available in plain text to a whole pile of sysadmins. Email is like a postcard. Anyone at the post office can read it.

So anyone working as a sysadmin at any of the sites that the email went through to get to you can get the password. It is only a matter of time before it leaks. By then any of the really politically damaging stuff will have been published.

@MPaul: “It’s unlikely that you will be able to do a complete job, and it strikes me that a poor attempt at redaction could put you in more legal jeopardy than no attempt at all. I suspect your safest path at this point is to publish the password and to not publish the emails.”

I have to agree – although honestly they’d have to find a way to anonymously publish the password if they wanted to truly avoid jeopardy. I’m not sure how safe it would be to openly publish the password, compared to publishing selected docs from the archive.

Jimbo says:
March 13, 2013 at 4:14 pm
“I hope FOIA manages to focus people’s minds more on the real problems facing vast swathes of humanity instead of wetting pants over the phantom ‘problem’ of slight temp rise since LIA.

Globally, diarrhoea is the leading cause of illness and death, and 88 per cent of diarrhoeal deaths are due to a lack of access to sanitation facilities, together with inadequate availability of water for hygiene and unsafe drinking water.
Source: JMP”

Most Christian organizations in the US have programs that address these problems. My church installed running water in a village in Honduras. Yes, that step is small but it will soon be followed by other steps.

Not sure if this has been suggested, but I think it would be best to divide and distribute the files to trusted and knowledgeable individuals so they can look through them for anything interesting. Those people would then email Anthony with any findings and he could then decide whether or not to publish them.

This would allow a limited sort of crowd-sourcing while reducing the risks of privacy breaches as requested by FOIA – a request I strongly think should be heeded.

Any privacy breaches would be limited to the specific files they were given and since they won’t have the password they can’t simply leak it.

I was wondering what one could tell from the writing about the person. I assumed some IT guy, whose phraseology and word usage would trigger so many references to hacking that …

Instead, I found very strong suggestions from the phrases used that the person authoring FOIA is a republican involved in some way in healthcare who reads a lot of Christian material. They may also have interests speaking about economics, population and perversely on green issue. Several time the word “Heritage” appeared, which I think is a word with a strong Republican link.

I found very little linkage to IT or computers in the phraseology except some brought up conversations dealing with the technical aspects of hard disks – a not very convincing connection.

So, on the face of it, I would suggest that the author is not “a hacker” or involved in IT. However this text and the modus operandi suggests they have some serious IT resources behind them. That would suggest that they either paid someone else to hack (in sharp contrast to what is said in the text) … or that there was no hack and that the information fell into their laps perhaps from an insider (but that does not explain the fact there was the actual hack of (un)realclimate).

Another possibility is that as suggested in the text, the author’s native language is e.g. a latin-derived language. This would require that all their technical talk about hacking is done outwith English and that they confine their English usage solely for political purposes and have learnt it not from IT publications but from spending an awful lot of time reading republican material on-line. I may not be very familiar with foreign IT people, but this doesn’t fit what I know.

But a serious note of caution. Whilst in theory this analysis should help focus on the likely “type” of author, it’s not a technique I have used or have seen anyone else use. Indeed, if one is trying to hide one’s origin, one may meticulously remove the technical phraseology which would be the linguistic signature which would help identify the author BY ADDING WORDS AND PHRASES e.g. from a right-wing republican website. (Much in the way ransom notes used to cut and paste letters from newspapers, this author may have cut and pasted phrases from their favourite (republican) websites.

But whatever way it comes, the republican link is strong …. at which point I wondered whether I should post this. But as I’m not republican ,,,,

No password but a bitcoin address? Mr FOIA can go f*ck himself. What’s the point of those emails being out there if there is a campaign to have only selected people see them? Are you going to be the high and mighty ones to release the truth to us great unwashed?

No doubt Jiminy has always been spoon-fed anything he wanted and always had his bottom wiped for him … talk about a sense of entitlement and no grasp on reality.

1) I notice what an extensive justification is made in the email to defend why they are deviating from the hockey stick, as if to keep from being expelled from the church of hockey holiness. I have never heard of such a thing. How does Mann hold such power over these people? Aren’t scientists supposed to be independent-minded?

Craig –

I’ve always understood that Mann has a terrific gift for attracting funding. Few scientists have that. Remember how climatology was a scientific backwater in the pre-CAGW days? Notice how it isn’t anymore? MONEY. Follow the money. The money, as far as I’ve seen by the way people act, goes through Micheal Mann. Suck up or die on the vine. And I am sure early on some people spoke out – and others learned not to.

And Mann knows it and has known it a very long time. Take away the money, and see how fast everybody is calling his crap “crap.”

Mpaul says:
March 13, 2013 at 4:22 pm……………………
I suspect your safest path at this point is to publish the password and to not publish the emails.
The current justice department won’t prosecute Gleick but I suspect they won’t hesitate to go after climate dissidents for thought crimes. Best to be safe here and consult a lawyer.
——————–

None of my business Anthony but they might want to stop the number one (that’s #1) science blog.
I hope you consider Mpaul’s comment.
cn

I doubt anyone’s going to come after the bloggers. To what point? It’d just force FOIA to release the password publicly. Plenty of copies of ‘all.7z’ out there, I think I’ve got one on an old hard drive myself in fact. If they leave the bloggers be, at least some of the irrelevant but potentially embarrassing stuff (how’d they put it at the Blackboard? ‘Prof-on-grad action’; ick) has a chance to avoid public scrutiny for awhile longer.
But what do I know. ~shrug~ Not a heck of a lot about such things.

I can’t see how giving the password to a handful of skeptical leaders is functional. I respect those guys immensely, but they had trouble before with 2,000 files. It took quite some time to go through THOSE, even with “We The People” helping. (I didn’t do anything worthwhile myself…)

But if 2,000 and all of us take a while, how in the WORLD will a handful of people go through 200,000?

Other thoughts:

Given all that, I am sure with search engines, Anthony and Steve and BH will find incriminating emails. Perhaps if we are ALL sifting, WUWT and CA and BH get overloaded.

Personally, I think Anthony knows who his regulars are, and I think Anthony should flex FOIA’s request a bit and include some of us who will be a HELP. If that doesn’t include me, I would accept it – with a frown, but I think Anthony and Steve will need help. Steve, for one, has posted so infrequently for such a long time – will he be up to it?

The question still lingers whether Climategate 1, 2 and 3 emails were hacked or released by someone inside CRU (aka whistleblower). Not being familiar with innareds of computer networks I browsed the Internet and discovered these two links. Can anyone tell me whether Pointman is telling the truth or BSing me?

Cracking the password is extremlely unlikely. Even more unlikely that someone else would crack it and then pretend to be “FOIA”.

Unhappy that it was not a hacker / big oil / the Russians but instead perhaps an insider ?

– – – – – – – – – –

Manfred,

Thanks for your comment.

I assume you are referring to my comment on March 13, 2013 at 10:27 am. I respond on that basis.

There are many things no one knows about Mr. FOIA’s situation.

Probability is low that someone could crack FOIA’s password to the encrypted CG3 files if we only go on what Luboš Motl [he got the password from FOIA] said,

That [cracking the password] was hopeless, we know today, because the password is an extremely long sequence of gibberish characters.

There are many things unknown, even to the extent that Mr FOIA maybe was hacked and the password obtained? That would be interesting as a variation to the possible scenarios wrt this CG3 release situation. Detection isn’t an exact science. Heck even science isn’t exact.

Imagine a powerful person, who has long opposed CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming).

Imagine if that person had enough resources to buy help – and silence – from both climate scientist “insiders” and IT people. The resources of a small country, for example.

Imagine if that person could not be “outed” by police or media because of the diplomatic consequences.

Imagine if that person is from continental Europe, but speaks and writes excellent English.

Imagine if that person has recently left a position in which he might have described himself as “we.”

That leaves two candidates I can think of. And I doubt that FOIA is the former pope. Though I suppose he might have listened to George Pell, but not felt the time was right to follow up in public, until now. The other candidate has already been suggested on this thread by “mrmethane”.

Against this view, the e-mail says “I prepared CG1 & 2 alone.” I think this may turn on what the writer meant by “prepared.” Maybe he really meant “planned?”

With that much material it is literally impossible to eliminate everything that could be quoted out of context to cause the harm you fear. Troublemakers will be able to take what you think safeto release and re-hash it in such a way that it will still be harmful. In fact they could make up complete lies about anyone related to the parties involved and claim these lies were released by you from confidential material. noone will check back.

They could also claim that what you withold includes sensitive confidential material and that this itself breaches privacy laws.

Its even possible that associates of the principals will even now be afraid of what transactions in their private affairs may or may not be revealed, specifically BECAUSE you are witholding the mails andpreventing them seeking reassurance by checking.

Remember the Australian telephone hoaxers whose prank recently caused a nurse to kill herself. How could they foresee that? How can you foresee the implications of every last e-mail How would you know if one parties reference to his location at a given time at aconference bar suddenly contradicts his story to his wife as to where he really was at the time?

The course of action you are placed upon is dangerous. We live in desperate times (at any rate, I do) and you have no option but take the least dangerous route, which is to release the entire package untampered.

Just think how phrases like that will otherwise be applied: you “tampered” with the files?

“First thing I would do is using perl or python or some other scripting language, attempt to filter the larger file against what has already been released and create a new output file with just the delta.”

You will go through a hockeystick-like personal development with a day or two.

ROFLMAO … yeah, stoneage is about right. I already have a Java/ODBMS (Object Database Management System) capable of Exabyte size data, extremely fast (30,000+ queries per second) and is already designed to do exactly this, and even through a web interface if desired. Sheeesh, piece of cake. Some people still live in caves.

From my experience it is usually only foreigners who have bothered to learn English grammar. [Lew Skannen, March 13 at 5:50 pm]

I was taught it as part of the O Level but I understand it was later dropped from the syllabus — sometime around the mid 1960s I think. Clearly a sufficient number of hardleftards had infiltrated the educational establishment by then to begin their programme of destruction. For those of us who did Latin—compulsory in all public schools and grammar schools in those days, but not taught in ‘secondary-moderns’ which formed the bulk for secondary education—English grammar was a doddle. I enjoyed neither subject. Indeed, I despised them. However, exercises and tests on English grammar had the single redeeming feature of supplying some very welcome light relief from the unutterable tedium of that ugly daily grind.

At first I agreed with the rational of editing the personal and irrelevant information before allowing wholesale access to the encrypted emails.
But the very fact that FOIA was driven to leak this information, due to the lack of ethics and personal integrity of these people, negates that first attitude.
I have no sympathy for their personal lives any more.
This festering, pernicious fraud has been going on for years.
The damage done is real, not some phantom of the future.
Why should we waste any time protecting any of the parties involved here?
Politely, they betrayed the human race.
They had the choice and chose deceit.
Could the scam have advanced, without their complicity?
Everything on these records was funded by us taxpayers,any personal information is just proof they were ripping of their employers.
And the password will leak out.

The question still lingers whether Climategate 1, 2 and 3 emails were hacked or released by someone inside CRU (aka whistleblower). Not being familiar with innareds of computer networks I browsed the Internet and discovered these two links. Can anyone tell me whether Pointman is telling the truth or BSing me?

I think if it was a hack, they would have hacked other important academic institutions for similar content, like Penn State, and UVA.

Guys, guys, guys… It was Phil Jones. We all know that. He was so upset at Man”s bullying, he’d finally had enough. Watching him browbeat Keith Briffa was the last straw.

But then he thought about what Mann was going to DO to him, so he got the “blue flu” when CG1 came out.

Phil Jones, the little man who, just when he got to replace Tom Wigley and be king of the roost, along came that damned American, Mike Mann, and screwed up the whole setup. He;d waited an entire decade to replace Tom Wigley, and be #1 Climate Scientist in the World, and then that freaking usurper. . . Well, Jones would show HIM!

But, coward that he was, Jones couldn’t stomach what he had done – turning on his allies. He couldn’t face them. He couldn’t face anybody.

He still can’t. He’s composed that manifesto from skeptical comments and articles, so as to throw everybody off the scent.

I surely hope Mr. FOIA is joking about using Bitcoin, as I would hope he would not be duped into using an electronic “currency” that can be hacked, hijacked and manipulated, and has no real monetary value.

You are right to point out some of the serious problems facing mankind. But, If we are to solve those problems, we need cheap and plentiful energy.

We need a developed world which is not going to waste trillions of dollars on a non problem,ie., manmade CO2 induced global warming, and can instead, use some of its wealth to assist those less fortunate in develoing countries.

FOIA is very intelligent. I don’t believe for a second that the semantic mishmash is anything but a cover for the CRU insider who provided the key to the goodies. Good for him, he’s probably a good friend. Probably covering for a scientist weary with the world, looking forward to enjoying his few remaining years in peace.
Ah, well. I hope we never find out the parties involved. It’s a much better story with their disguises.

Yes I think you summed it up precisely. The only reason I know English grammar, or even that such a concept exists, is because in later life I took to learning German and Russian.
I wish I had learnt Russian first because the other two are a breeze after that.

Regarding the question of the password – I think it should be kept secret. Bundle up some wads of emails and send them out to trusted individuals for reading but I see no reason to open the password up to general public.

“Sorry, but I agree that the password being ‘held’ by a select few seems rather pointless – a crowdsourcing dissection of the emails will be a lot quicker. On the personal info/redaction front – I think most people would realise if something was clearly ‘personal’ – but otherwise, if it contains climate science, and certainly climate science paid for with public funds – as far as I’m concerned it is fair game! ….”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I agree with Kev, this is the perfect example of when crowd sourcing would be useful. Give say 220 people 1,000 emails and, within a couple of days, these could be sorted and the scientific emails released.

I am far from convinced that there are any personal emails on what is infact a public server. I suspect that if one uses a public server/one’s office server to send (or even possibly to receive) an email, the author has waived privilege over that email, such that it is no longer personal and private. That said, I for one am not at all interested in wasting time reading irrelevant personal messages and see no point in posting that class of email on the web. I am only interested in viewing emails that touch upon the science (and in this category I include PR and peer review and control over journals and publication etc).

A copy of these emails should be made available to the attorneys who are dealing with the litigation against UVA, Penn State and Mann, should they wish to see them.

Finally, I see no point in the speculation regarding the identity of FOIA, and if anything, I consider it to be counter-productive. Let’s not waste time, but instead spend time on scrutinizing the science.

Kudos to FOIA who is clearly as brave and as morally admirable as he or she is savvy

Please let’s respect FOIA’ wish and need for anonymity. Many of us may have suspicions, but this is serious stuff and even hints and speculation may put this whistle-blower in danger – there are billions of ££sss and $sss at stake here. People are ruined, hunted down, and even killed for far less.

Anthony, I agree that you should take legal advice – all the blog holders in receipt of the password should. Perhaps you could pay for it collectively; but it may not be applicable across international boundaries since laws do differ. It’s important not to put yourself or WUWT in jeopardy

Let’s hope CG3 will harm The Cause so badly that it will turn the MSM into skeptics.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

For this to happen, there really needs to be a clear and obvious smoking gun. CG3 will need something far stronger than that found in CG1.

If there is nothing of substance in CG3, the release of CG3 will have taken the pressure off the Team.

It is likely that CG3 will be a damp squid if FOIA reviewed the emails prior to relelasing CG1 and when releasing CG1 he intended releasing teh most damning emails. If he did not so review the emails, then by virtue of the sheer numbers involved, it is likely that there are some gems in CG3. Whwther they will be sufficient to deliver the killer blow is another matter.

u.k.(us) says: Mosher never said a word on this thread, that I saw.
You want to trash someone, here I am.

Maybe you failed to miss the comment I was responding to. My point was very clear, Mr. Mosher has no such background that would make him remotely some sort of “hacker”. I find it ironic that posting someone’s actual credentials is now considered “trashing” them. Sorry if I get tired of urban legends based on people not being fully informed.

I grew up in Washington State U.S.A. in the 1940s and 50s. By the 1960s, my dad (an MD) had built a Heathkit CB (Citizen’s Band) radio so that my mother could communicate with him whenever he was in the car doing house calls, and was needed for some emergency at the hospital. The CB lingo he used at the end of a series of exchanges between home base and himself in the car was:

1) “Standing By” if he would still be in the car and reachable within a reasonable amount of future time, and

2) “Over and Out” if he would be leaving the car shortly, and thus be unreachable.

It seems to me that FOIA would have to be greater than 50 years old to have naturally used the sign-off phrase “Over and Out.” Certainly someone younger than 40 would not customarily use that phrase. But the age range for someone with the computer technology to carry off this heist would most likely be the less than 40 crowd. Conclusion?: FOIA has purposefully thrown all kinds of chaff at the radar, and is enjoying himself immensely reading our posts!

Congratulations FOIA. Now, someone needs to write a book that makes Deep Throat a children’s story.

Let the speculation games recommence! My WAG is that Mr. FOIA is an IT person, not any climate name, big or small. An FOIA request was made, e-mails were collected for the purpose of making a response to it, on a non-CRU computer, and the access to that somehow became known to Mr. FOIA, perhaps because he was tasked with fabricating the FOIA response, especially if he was told how to respond. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future.

There are unlikely to be any bombshells in this bunch. So there’s no rush to get it posted. The risk would be in inadvertently posting material that causes divorces, suicides, etc., because that would make our side look like the black hats. We have to avoid giving the warmists an opportunity to counter-punch and smear. So lots of time should be taken, and each segment of the bunch should be reviewed by several people. They should err in the direction of redaction.

The real value of this trove will be to sociologists of the future, who will have lots of background context with which to analyze beliefs. In the short term, some quickie sociologic al and psychological insights will be obvious. Also, there may be seemingly innocent references and giveaways that make the earlier data dumps more meaningful.

And there may be some comic relief, like an e-mail advising a colleague to bring an umbrella, “because my lumbago is acting up.”

Maybe you should send a copy of the full set to CRU and ask them to identify the ones they consider personal with their reasons. Publish the rest, and then go through the withheld ones redacting any personal information.

Send another set to the university of Virgina and ask them for their opinion of Mann.

Apart from anything else it would give the devil something useful to do with their idle hands, and make them sweat.

It makes me really happy to read that this was done by someone who happened upon the evidence and wanted to do the correct thing for humanity. I like this person very much, if only their were more like him/her in the world! Thank you for your gift to humanity

Anthony Watts: “… we simply want to make sure there’s no information in it that is a of a personal, non-FOIA nature, that could damage somebody related or non related to the issue.”

In full agreement with your reasoning Anthony. Especially if there is any information that in someway could lead to identity of Mr. FOIA.

Sam the First says: “Please let’s respect FOIA’ wish and need for anonymity.” “– there are billions of ££sss and $sss at stake here. People are ruined, hunted down, and even killed for far less.”

As ‘Sam the First’ points out Mr. FOIA has cost some very powerful people and governments a lot of money and power, and we know governments (ours included) have no issues with terminating people they deem a threat. Domestic drones anyone?

Perhaps with the inevitable witch hunt about to be launched – hopefully Tallbloke has his pyjamas and toothbrush packed – we can all say “I am FOIA”. Whoever you are mate – the poor, the dissenters and scientists of integrity are forever in your debt.

I wonder if those who want to provide all the emails to everyone who wants to read them would feel the same if details of every email exchange they were ever involved in (including as a passive recipient of a copy) was circulated around the globe?

Pretty much all workplaces have a ‘reasonable use’ policy for using office communications (phone, email etc) for personal matters. Accepting that people can only do certain things in business hours, they allow you to make an appointment with your psychiatrist, proctologist or oncologist this way; they don’t mind if you contact your spouse to say you’ll be late home or arrange to pick up the kids; etc etc.

If you put in a legitimate FOI request, these communications are always excluded from releases. Suggesting that the email addresses and other personal information relating to friends, lovers and family is public property just because you don’t like some of the principals involved is pretty sleazy, IMO. The same goes for colleagues whose only involvement may be to circulate invitations to the office Christmas party.

I wonder if those who want to provide all the emails to everyone who wants to read them would feel the same if details of every email exchange they were ever involved in (including as a passive recipient of a copy) was circulated around the globe?

Pretty much all workplaces have a ‘reasonable use’ policy for using office communications (phone, email etc) for personal matters. Accepting that people can only do certain things in business hours, they allow you to make an appointment with your psychiatrist, proctologist or oncologist this way; they don’t mind if you contact your spouse to say you’ll be late home or arrange to pick up the kids; etc etc.

This gives me to wonder if johanna has ever made use of an e-mail account for professional purposes, or even such an account set up by an employer for her job-related activities.

No “reasonable use” policy established in the workplace for the employee’s use of company e-mail accounts ever formally condones personal communications of the kinds johanna is talking about – to make“an appointment with your psychiatrist,” to “contact your spouse” with any kind of potentially embarrassing information, “etc etc.”

Telephone use in this regard is almost universally either admitted or “deliberately overlooked,” but because e-mail communications are not only retained “permanently” on servers but also discoverable evidence in both criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, employers have long since become Enronically focused upon all use of the e-mail accounts they establish for business purposes.

Except under limited circumstances (“Your call may be recorded for quality purposes” articulated every time such a recording is to be made, even if it’s not to be permanently retained in the archives), the practice of recording an employee’s phone conversations is almost nil. But e-mails are another matter, and anyone contending otherwise is arguing either from ignorance or duplicitous intent.

The professional person – by which is generally meant a self-employed medical doctor or attorney or accountant in private practice – is intensely aware of both the canons of his profession covering patient/client confidentiality and issues of professional liability, and has incentive to be as cautious in the use of his “business” e-mail account as he is in the composition of any communication that leaves a paper trail.

Every stinkin’ little bit of the all.7z archive is as much discoverable evidence as if it were the e-mail records subpoenaed from MF Global, for example, in the criminal prosecution of Jon Corzine and his associates, or in a lawsuit undertaken to recover the millions of client funds “disappeared” by these miscreants and malefactors. Their lawful ability to redact or withhold discoverable evidence in the form of e-mail records is nil.

How could it be otherwise for the C.R.U. correspondents whose connivances at unethical conduct were – stupidly, arrogantly, flagrantly – conducted in e-mail communications among their cabal?

FOIA’s sense of humor and use of English leaves no doubt – – – Lord Monckton obviously.

No?

Well, “FOIA” gives it all away; obviously a play on the actual name – – – a descendant of Eddie Foy through one of “The Seven Little Foys”.

No?

Surely then a friendly space alien a la Klaatu’s, “I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason”, which is what the CAGW crowd want.

No?

I do hope no one discovers who FOIA is, and if anyone does please do not reveal it.

Mr. Watts, I am not an attorney but John Whitman says: March 13, 2013 at 4:43 pm; krischel says:
March 13, 2013 at 5:15 pm; and Chuck Nolan says: March 13, 2013 at 5:58 pm may have a point. I do not know what immunity from liability you may claim as freedom of the press or otherwise. There is a hornbook rule taught to every first year law student that “barring duty there is no liability.” U. S. law answers the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” with a resounding NO. Supposing you see someone drowning. You do nothing. They drown. You are not liable unless you had a duty to do something, say as a lifeguard. Supposing you attempt to save them and fail. You are now liable. It may be if anyone claims damages from what you redact or fail to redact you have made yourself liable. Do check with an attorney.

I agree on the need for caution, but I don’t think we have to worry that people like Anthony and Steve Mc will suddenly “throw caution to the winds.”

Also, although Mr. FOIA himself suggests that the dramatic info on climate research has already been released, I find it hard to imagine that there will not be some important nuggets still to come. Some 97.5% of the 220,000+ emails have NOT yet been publicized, and although FOIA did keyword searches he also seems to indicate that he did not take on the many months of reading that would have been required to go through the others (800+ books worth of text according to estimates). In all of that written by or pertaining to the work of a number of leading climate researchers, it would be remarkable if 97.5% of the emails contained little of interest (granting that the 2.5% selected were responsive to the juiciest keywords).

Mr. FOIA: “Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.”

Big !Thumbs-Up! to FOIA for recognizing dangers of unchecked knee jerk reactions to the claims of Global Warming. We have already seen Alarmists CO2/GW mitigation schemes failing (bird choppers, burning electric cars), along with some downright wacko schemes (convert power stations to burn biomass – trees) that would have wreaked havoc on countries and their inhabitants.
Mr. FOIA has done entire world a great service by exposing the frauds of GW Alarmism.

how exciting. meanwhile, no MSM coverage so far, but some questioning going on in the MSM nonetheless:

13 March: Financial Post Canada: Peter Foster: Deranged science, perverse policy
Book describes attempt to impose climate servitude
In his brilliant new book, The Age of Global Warming, British writer Rupert Darwall notes a phenomenon known as “climate change derangement syndrome.” The phenomenon was on prominent display this week when NDP leader Tom Mulcair went to Washington…
Mr. Mulcair criticized Mr. Harper for pulling out of Kyoto, but is he even aware that the Americans never signed on to Kyoto in the first place?…
Canadians play a significant, if not always noble, part in Mr. Darwall’s story, although there is no doubting the heroic stature of Stephen McIntyre, the semi-retired mathematical wiz whose dogged investigations, along with those of academic Ross McKitrick, led to the exposure of the iconic “hockey stick” temperature graph, which was embraced for its political usefulness rather than its scientific accuracy. Mr. Darwall does a thorough job of explaining the massive, but still largely unrecognized, scandal of the related Climategate emails…
How little scientific substance is behind the policy that almost ate the world is just one of the fascinating insights of this excellent book, which takes the lid off one of the most bizarre chapters in modern history, although it’s one that still isn’t finished…http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/03/13/peter-foster-deranged-science-peverse-policy/

(CORRECTED) Portugal CO2 consultants look to Brazil as EU scheme stutters
PAMPLONA, March 12 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Portugal’s economic crisis combined with the collapse in carbon prices has led to the closure of two of the nation’s carbon companies, leaving those that survive to look to emerging markets such as Brazil…http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2217725?&ref=searchlist

12 March: Globe & Mail, Canada: Margaret Wente: Carbon offsets: B.C.’s looniest green scheme yet?
Every public institution is now required to pay $25 a tonne for the carbon dioxide it emits. That’s money that’s no longer available for textbooks, teachers and nursing care…
Most of this money winds up in the pockets of large private companies, which are paid for not emitting greenhouse gasses they almost certainly wouldn’t have emitted anyway, according to investigations by The Vancouver Sun. Corporate recipients have included Encana, Interfor, Kruger and other companies that already had carbon-reduction projects under way or completed. Millions more have gone to the Nature Conservancy of Canada and aboriginal groups connected to the Great Bear Rainforest; they were paid for not cutting down trees they wouldn’t have been allowed to cut down anyway. The prices are all negotiated by Pacific Carbon Trust, a Crown agency that specializes in voodoo carbon accounting…
Carbon-offset schemes have created a lucrative niche for consultants, bureaucrats, accountants and entrepreneurs who, for tidy fees, will help you market credits, set the price, determine how much carbon dioxide you’re subtracting from the planet, and write reports certifying that your program is a brilliant success, even if it’s built on the backs of schoolchildren and sick people.
B.C.’s carbon-neutral green dream is a multimillion-dollar boondoggle. But that doesn’t mean it will be shut down any time soon…http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/carbon-offsets-bcs-looniest-green-scheme-yet/article9623584/

March 13th, 2013 at 9:12 pm
Ok,
The concordance is written and running.
Its not perfect but it will give you a normalized table
of “token” and filename. The filenames are numbers
and so represent a natural index.
220K mails, I fear the concordance will be massive.
but I built it as a normalized table fwiw. converted everything to lower case and some other stuff.
the header code should be easy if the whole stack looks like the first few hundred. As a first pass I think I’ll just grab the “top”
header. any embedded mail ( threaded crap) will be a parsing nightmare.
for database tables i’d assume a table of from, to, cc,
maybe words in subject line.
Hopefully the concordnace will finish running soon, and I write the header stripper

I actually resent the elitist release of the password as it means we unworthy, though we outnumber the worthy by much, will get dribs and drabs from the Illuminati based on their prejudices. If we circulate among the blogs of sufficiently diverse Illuminati we will get a fuller picture through the eyes of same but still incomplete. Else as here we get titillating dribs and drabs based on the local giggle factor. This is embarrassing and surely by now Mr./Ms FOIA realizes this.

I am far better at deciding what is important to me than any of the chosen few and I’m certain beyond doubt the serious followers of climate information abuse feel the same. Mr/MS FOIA is good at heart but naive of the world, I fear. Rather than providing the world with information he/she has enabled the few to manage the lens through which we see this new information. Call me a skeptic for that is what I am. In all things.

Sooner the better, let it all out, friends. We’re all adults here. Thus far this is a non-event. But this we can be certain of – those selected in the initial circulation list have the password, and so too does Google and through them the world governments. It is a matter of time that those of us who are free to cast ballots will have it too. If the truth hurts, so it should. The evidence of flagrant exploitation of any imagined privacy issues from prior releases pales in comparison to the value of this information, unfettered, in the minds of free people.

@JiminyBob the idea is to crowd source a few trusted people to remove the personal details from the emails before releasing them to the public at large. Look, there is a difference between personal info and the science/politics related stuff. E.g. What if some of them casually talk about their children in the emails? Do you really think that it would be responsible to just post the raw emails without checking exactly what is being posted first? Do you think it is fair on “innocent by-standers” to get their emails or other info plastered all over the web? No. Of course you don’t. Well okay then, smarty pants, how are you going to go through hundreds of thousands of emails and redact all of that stuff. Well, gee, I guess you select a few people you consider to be responsible adults to help you to go through and redact the info before it gets released.

You don’t need to write special scripts to read the emails, you just need the right file viewer and file search utility which is all you ever need with the originals. You do not need them in a special database either, just in a folder on your HD. Yawn.

Crosspatch generally wisely suggests: First thing I would do is using perl or python or some other scripting language, attempt to filter the larger file against what has already been released and create a new output file with just the delta.

To which I would add, in an attempt to be constructive and help Anthony out:

Perl is nice, but for something like this one would want to use e.g. procmail, a tool designed to do what needs to be done directly. I use procmail, for example, to separate out mail messages (previously tagged by spamassassin) into various mailboxes (otherwise I’d be literally inundated in SPAM, as my filters pull out tens of megabytes of spam a day!)

The nice thing about procmail is that it is ALREADY aware of things like mail message boundaries and the like, and it is perfectly happy building mail folders that a mail program can then read. Like perl, it can manage regular expressions. Unlike perl, it is already aware of constructs like subject line, address lines, message body, and so on, and can perform specific searches for regex or keyword (including wild cards and so on) in “just” a subject line, or message body, or in an address.

Indeed, I’d strongly consider using spamassassin on the spool first (as it is highly probable that some of the content IS spam, and because spamassassin can be configured to look for other kinds of “spam” with very powerful matching algorithms.

But with procmail, one could make fairly short work of the chore. Procmail would cheerfully extract ONLY the messages containing the word Mann, for example, and put them into a single mail folder entitled Mann. It would happily build a folder containing all the messages that contain “tree” “ring” “dendro” “Yamal” (plus anything else one can imagine that pertains to using tree rings to infer temperature). Many of the folders would contain messages redundantly, but getting them sorted out into (overlapping) folders by general topic — and even more importantly, rejecting all of the messages that do NOT contain some sort of key word indicating the message’s relevance to e.g. climate science in some way — should take a skilled procmail/regular expression coder no more than a day or two of moderately pleasant work.

Only a crazy person would tackle 220,000 messages by hand, or be daunted by them as if one HAD to tackle them by hand. God invented computers for a reason.

Anthony, if you’ve never used procmail or are unaware of the tool, I’d be happy to send you a sample filter or walk you through writing a few rules that you can apply to the entire spool (from any linux box) until you can write your own. They’re often pretty simple. In a nutshell, you just run procmail my-procmail-recipes < spoolfile-to-process, where you fill the recipes files with specific recipes that will apply rules to each message in turn and then dispose of it (or not) in a named mail folder (or take other actions as requested).

The only bad thing is that procmail is expert friendly and the recipes are only human readable if the human reads regexp and globs.

To me the FOIA email ‘screams’ of a highly educated person concisely laying out a case he believes in; and then that same person ‘dumbing’ down what he has written to disguise the syntax, vocabulary and diction that could be used to trace him. Take this sentence.
“Filtering\redacting personally sensitive emails doesn’t require special expertise”
The person with the wits, intelligence and courage to pull off what FOIA has done is not the same person who would inappropriately use a backslash. A backslash is basically only ever used in programming and the one here was deliberately placed to help muddle up the flow of the letter. And the “over and out” sign off? I’ll bet this is the first and last time in his life that FOIA has ever used that phrase.
I mean if nothing else it’s not possible that this guy has never heard of Peter Gleick!
Good on ya!

“The evidence of flagrant exploitation of any imagined privacy issues from prior releases pales in comparison to the value of this information, unfettered, in the minds of free people.”
———————————————————
Fine. How about posting up the names of your children and where they go to school, plus your and your family’s medical history, your spouse’s email and employment details, and any personal or financial problems you or your family may have, for worldwide circulation?

Good god people they aren’t reading the entire set and cutting out everything they personally deem unimportant. They’re just removing things of an overtly personal nature due to concerns of privacy ethics.

Its not an issue of removing things that they think are mundane science discussions, just things that clearly have nothing to do with science. More over you have multiple individuals doing it so the only way any particular e-mail is getting filtered from the public is if 100% of the people who were sent the password decide it is of a personal nature.

Considering the amount you already trust these people as you read their blogs and articles and trust that what they’re telling you is true I really fail to see how this is strains the existing levels of trust.

Perhaps with the inevitable witch hunt about to be launched – hopefully Tallbloke has his pyjamas and toothbrush packed – we can all say “I am FOIA”. Whoever you are mate – the poor, the dissenters and scientists of integrity are forever in your debt.

Bring it on! If the authorities harass me again, my lawyer will make me a moderately rich man. I am acting within the law, as I was last time.

The password is no longer on my computer
The email account it came through was at an independent ISP and has since been deleted
The decrypted archive has been stored on an external and protected drive.

While FOIA implies he is not from an Anglophone country, I find it difficult to believe the above wasn’t written by a native English speaker. I’ve read it carefully, and there are none of those small things that result from translating from a foreign language that don’t sound quite right to a native English speaker.

Nor, are there any indicators of an English variant like American or Indian English.

The only thing that didn’t fit for me was ‘the major brushstrokes’. Its not a common expression in the context he uses it, and felt it could be a translation.

He also uses ‘could’ where ‘would’ is more appropriate, but that’s a common mistake.

It seems to me —
The persona of FOIA is that of an Indian who has learned English as a second language. To be clear his persona is not that of an Indian who was exposed to Indian English from birth (such people speak better English than I do) but of an Indian who learned his English as a teenager. It is unclear to me whether the author intends us to believe his persona learned his English in India (later coming to England) or as a teenage immigrant to England. I suspect the later.

I say “the persona of FOIA” because i do not believe this person is “culturally” Indian. I believe he is English. (alright, 75% chance English, 25% chance American) He once had literary ambitions (and possibly still has on the top shelf of his closet a boxed unpublished novel with an Indian character or characters in it.) There is a small chance (about 5%) that FOIA is racially Indian but i believe he is Anglo. (If he is racially Indian then he was born in the West not India and thus English or American.) I conclude this because the “mistakes” he makes in his letter are the types that comic Indian characters make in novels. Their abundance is the giveaway. He still has the writing bug in him. (Come on guy, “papal plural”???)

“Papal plural” is interesting for other reasons in that in newspapers editorial columnists often use “we” and university rectors can use “we” as a right. There is a possibility that this guy was involved in editing (or reviewing for) an academic journal. He is making a joke saying that since he is no longer involved in editorial processing he is passing along the e-mails to others.

“I found myself in front of a choice”. If he had said — I found myself before a choice — we would think his language literary. People commonly say — I found myself facing a choice or confronting a choice.

“Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy/career of a few scientists, and the well being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern. (Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety (and the) privacy/career of a few scientists (with) the well being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern.) He usage elsewhere indicates he understand English grammar. That sentence is a put up job — but surprisingly it is not incorrect. He is talking about three things all balancing out against each other. In English we model our language after the two sided balance scale therefore we would group “my own safety” and “privacy/career” together and balance them against “billions of people”..

No more examples but one. There is a lot of stuff in that note.

“I will several batches, to anyone i can think of.” This usage of “several” fascinates me. A final joke? Well, yes but I think a more subtle joke lies underneath the obvious “wrong usage” joke. Unfortunately I don’t own a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. This is probably a perfectly correct usage of the word “several” — if you were writing 600 hundred years ago. The word “several’ has lost many of its older meanings. The meaning here seems to be “sever” (make copies and send them). The word “several” once had a usage (Shakespeare makes a couple uses of it) meaning “singular” (severable from all others therefore unique), It was often used to refer to unmarried women (single). So this guy is making jokes that he thinks climate scientists are to dumb to get. Writer’s ego tsk tsk. Of course I am not a climate scientist.

Anyway, the highest probability is that this guy is English, an academic, once wanted to be a novelist, still is fascinated by language and has or had connections with climate journals. He didn’t sort through 200,000 e-mails when he first got them but knew where the juicy parts were. He is an insider, a whistle blower.

It might not be wise to actually put this on line. That he is “literary” might serve to identify him to the wrong people. But i thought I would share it with the people at WUWT. Just snip it. Fine with me. I had fun writing it.

And hurrah for Dr. Tim Ball. I wasn’t a huge fan of strongly encouraging FOIA to put his neck on the line yet further (since he had already done so much), but by coincidence or not, FOIA has chosen to do just that.

Well he’s a brave man and deserves the world’s gratitude — especially the poor and disadvantaged and anyone concerned with truth.

Well i for one am not actually that interested in what the password is, no what always intrigued me was whether or not it was a short, simple password, in other words guessable? or a long or complex one perhaps?
Can anyone in the know put my curiosity on that point to bed?

I do not see how this whole email thing can prevent warmists, their loyal press and politicians to proceed as usual, claiming that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” causing warming and that the emissions must be cut. At best they would admit some unethical things done by some people.

Even if an email from a well known “warmism scientist” could be found where he, let us say, ridicules the notion of “greenhouse effect”, it would not affect the “scientific” foundation of warmism.

Searching CG2 emails here http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5571 for “crap”, reveals some interesting dissension in the high ranks of those who write the CAGW meme. If I were looking to turn a disaffected pair of scientists in to whistleblowers, I think I might know where to start. This will increasingly become the only way out for those involved. There will be a significant 1st mover advantage.

From email #102433444, http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=5571 between an Ed Cook and a Keith Briffa, openly criticizing a chap called Mike Mann, and his work (my bold, spelling errors not mine):

“Hi Keith,

Of course, I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in
Mike’s recon, particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your
response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his
letter. It would be too aggravating. The only way to deal with this
whole issue is to show in a detailed study that his estimates are
clearly deficient in multi-centennial power, something that you
actually did in your Perspectives piece, even if it was not clearly
stated because of editorial cuts. It is puzzling to me that a guy as
bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit
more objectively.

Ed”

Briffa’s reply …

“Ed

I have just read this lettter – and I think it is crap. I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years , and … (better say no more)
Keith”

Well I hope I get to see the key one day, just to satisfy my own curiosity.

I went on the remote chance that the key was “hidden in plain sight” in the readme. I wrote a program to combine selected phrases in the readme in various ways to form candidate keys (forward, reversed, mirrored, repeated, de-punctuated, hex, ascii, all permutations etc), and wrote those to command files that invoked pkzip to extract the first file with each candidate key. I had a pc running this for over a year, it got through almost a million key candidates, then I gave up.

Short of publishing the key, maybe one of the new keyholders could let me know – WAS the key “hidden in plain sight” or was it just random noise?

OldWeirdHarold says: “Now just watch. The millionth comment is going to be FOIA.” am I allowed to comment on possibility that this will be the millionth post in the vane hope that it will be the millionth post commenting on the millionth post being on Climategate III email.

If it were, all I want to say is: After 16 years with no warming, it is clearer than ever that these self-proclaimed climate “scientists” can’t predict the climate and with their record if anyone now came along with the idea of spending $1trillion on littering the countryside with bird mincers to “save the planet” …. they would be treated like the UFO-hunting style idiots they are.

Employees paid for by the taxpayer that use facilities for private use are committing theft, any of these emails that are private business no matter how much dirty laundry they show are the property of the tax payers. Theft is theft it can be a paper clip a ream of paper or an email but it is theft of public property. Protect them not, for they think they are a protected species rather than scam artists and thieves.

More seriously, if only skeptical site owners have access to the password, are we in danger of being accused yet again of cherry picking, once the nice titbits start to be published? Don’t we actually need RC to also have access, since otherwise the team can simply claim that the selections would be easily refuted if they could also see the whole archive?

– – – – – – – – –

steveta,

At his site Luboš Motl posted on CG3 saying,

Yes, your humble correspondent [Luboš] was among a dozen of people in the world who received the e-mail above directly from Mr FOIA [ . . . ]

So, there are ~12 recipients of Mr FOIA’s original email. Apparently none of the ~12 recipients have provided public info about who those 12 were.

We (those who aren’t the ~12) cannot say that RC (or any other similar ‘consensus’ site) wasn’t a recipient. Maybe they were but the skeptical blog owners aren’t revealing the names of the all the recipients.

You are right to point out some of the serious problems facing mankind. But, If we are to solve those problems, we need cheap and plentiful energy.

I totally agree. I touched on electricity access and costs for Africa earlier. Without a cheap and regular supply of energy activity slows down. Energy is needed to move water pumps from one country to another, energy is needed to power cooling for medical supplies etc. Energy is needed for just about everything we do today. Instead, these genocidal maniacs are quite content to create alarmism, spread lies and line their pockets with carbonic scams.

220,000 emails – that’s the equivalent of 50 a day for 12 years. It is going to take weeks, or even months, to go through them all. Even if only one in a thousand is gold, that is still a lot of gold.

Hopefully, we are now going to witness an epic wriggling by Team members as they run around in circles trying to provide spurious and misleading explanations for new ‘scientific’ concepts, just like they did for ‘hide the decline’. Mann’s tweets, or whatever communication medium he uses, should be a great source of fun over the next few weeks.

I cannot imagine Mr/Ms FOIA has been through even a small percentage of all these emails, so he/she is probably unaware of much of the gold that is lurking in them.

Maybe others have raised this, but I think the MWP is already well documented by the CO2 Science website. Amazing that in the emails the wagonloads of papers that have been written to support MWP are not referred to!
M.H.Nederlof

I’m a Brit and I travel extensively in Europe and the Far East. The English seems far too good to be English from someone speaking as a second language. It is grammatically error free, even though the English is quite complicated in some places (a single sentence with multiple references to the same subject separated by commas is peculiar to English and you rarely see non-native speakers using such a construct). Also it is very English-idiomatic for a non-native speaker, but free of the kind of alien idiomatic usage of English that would give the game away if the writer was Scandinavian or German, for intance.

This makes the use of the phrase “There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere” a conundrum. After all, would a Canadian, Australian, Kiwi or even English speaking South-African consider themselves outside the “Anglo” sphere even if it is obvious they are outside the American sphere – especially to the point where they would want to state this so clearly? Use of the spelling “endeavor” suggests not a British person (but then again could be an artifact of a spell-checker set to American spelling – as mine is!). But the writer does say he is a part of the Western world (so not Indian – English is widely used as a first language amongst Indian academics and the middle-class, but India is most definitely not occidental).

Seems to me that FOIA is trying to pull the wool over our eyes as to his or her true nationality, but who can blame them for that?

Hmmm, I think the word “several” should be “release” and started as a typo that the spell-checker went mad with and changed to a totally different word. My WindowsPhone does exactly this kind of thing with some of my text messages often with embarrasing results.

I just googled the gibberish bitcoin address – now at 67 results – and it struck me, surely a few of the chosen twelve did had to google that equally gibberish actual password too, to check whether it’s been outed before or is out there with nobody knowing. So, just conceivably I guess, some google-search wizard could find it that way somehow?

I grew up in Washington State U.S.A.
It seems to me that FOIA would have to be greater than 50 years old to have naturally used the sign-off phrase “Over and Out.” Certainly someone younger than 40 would not customarily use that phrase. But the age range for someone with the computer technology to carry off this heist would most likely be the less than 40 crowd. Conclusion?: FOIA has purposefully thrown all kinds of chaff at the radar, and is enjoying himself immensely reading our posts!
_____________________________________________________________________________
or maybe FOIA just likes watching WWII or old police shows/movies

Having skimmed the comments, I have to say there’s one glaring omission in all the guesses as to FOIA’s nationality. As a translator from Dutch to English, I can’t help sensing a Dutch mind at work. His English is clearly of an exceptionally high standard, so he’s highly educated. He has probably spent most of his working life in the Anglo-Saxon world, though – probably the UK. This narrows it down considerably. Add to that the fact that there are not many folk using Bitcoin yet here in the Netherlands, and his likely connections with UEA, and I’d say the net is closing in on him as we speak. I’m not sure why, but I can’t help thinking he’s of my generation and is therefore possibly in his forties.

In summation:

He’s Dutch.
He’s in his late thirties / early forties.
He’s worked much of his life in the UK.
He’s highly (technically) educated.
He uses Bitcoin in a country with as yet few Bitcoin users (assuming he lives in NL).
He may well have some professional proximity to UEA, and obviously is somehow intimately connected to the world of climate science.

Maybe someone with access could do an email search for “Ababneh’ , as in Linah N. Ababneh, whose PhD dissertation on bristle cone tree rings knocked the blade off Mann’s hockey stick. Be interesting to hear what the team thought of that coffin nail.

I know everyone else is an edge waiting for the release of whatever new juicy bits there may be… but I just want to know how the story ends for the second email chain shown above. After being called out on the rumors that Ed did not genuflect to the Hocky Stick and had even been rumored to suggest that there might have been ANOTHER Hockey Stick (MWP), he was summoned forth to prove that he had not violated the first commandment (Thou shalt have no Hockey Sticks before me). So, after his apology (which seemed to still show that he wasn’t quite ready to renounce this new and intriguing idol), I have to know… is it all OK… was he allowed to kiss St. Michael’s ring?

otsar says:
March 13, 2013 at 1:47 pm
“MikeP
Not Ukrainian.
My guess is originally East coast USA, with later overseas education, most probably a Scandinavian country (some of the word order.) Embassy brat? Military brat?
He/She has mastered the mysteries of the possessive contraction that Americans use that are avoided by non native speakers.
Having said that, the language is probably very obfuscated for good reason.”
__________________________________________________________________
Thanks for replying. Tak is used in only one language I know of and I thought maybe you were using it as a hint. My guess is Continental European. British English is usually the version taught when English is the foreign language taught in school. Americanisms could be picked up from all the TV shows and movies that infiltrate every country. This would include the pervasive “over and out” that used to be used extensively in TV shows with truckers. A European would be familiar with European style public works projects and all the jokes that are based off that.

After reading SM comments on The Marcott paper, I believe that the mistakes are so grandiose, obvious and blatant that the paper will HAVE TO BE eventually withdrawn The only reply from the author is that none of the uptick data is robust. How in hell can Science publish such work?. I would say it will be the end of the team. It appears European governments are also giving up on AGW slowly but surely see Bishop HIll.

Now, here on this rugged patch of earth called the blogosphere….Gore’s hordes face obliteration!
Just there the barbarians huddle sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the swords and spears of 1000 emails.

Yet they stare now across the plain at 220,000 emails commanding the attention of 30,000 freethinkers!

The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one. Good odds for any sceptic.

This day, we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future
brighter than anything we can imagine.

Here’s a practical way to understand the CO2 problem – (from Australia).

How much CO2 is created by human activity? Imagine 1000 metres (1 km or well over 1/2 mile) of atmosphere laid out in a line on the ground. with all the gases separated out.

Let’s go for a walk along it.

The first 770 metres is Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres is Oxygen. That’s 980 metres of the 1000 metres. 20 metres (66 feet) to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour. 10 metres (33 feet) left. 9 metres is argon. Just 1 more metre (3 feet). A few other gases, ozone, neon etc, make up 620mm of that last metre.
The last 380mm is carbon dioxide. 96% of that is produced by Mother Nature. (fermentation, bush fires and volcanoes, much of it underwater,). The recent Icelandic Volcano negated all the UK efforts made by us to reduce CO2.
Of our journey of 1000 metres just 15 millimetres are left – about half an inch. That’s the amount of carbon dioxide human activity puts into the air. Of those 15 millimetres the UK contributes about 4% or 0.6mm of the kilometre. The thickness of a credit card.

What is the effect of higher CO2 levels in the air?

At the start of the Carboniferous Era – some 350 million years ago – the CO2 in the air was about 5 or 6 times more than now (2200mm of the 1km). Despite this ‘dangerously’ high level of CO2 the world did not boil over. Instead there was an almost explosive growth of vast forests. For 50 million years the trees steadily grew and fell down to be covered up, crushed and eventually transformed into the extensive coal seams around the world. The fungi that rots dead wood had not evolved then so the trees lay as wood. By the end of this era – some 300million years ago – the CO2 level was about the same as now.

So where did all the CO2 go?

The trees in the almost limitless forests that flourished then had absorbed it to become stored underground in coal. How come? Well let’s look at Wheat. To grow wheat five conditions are required.

The DNA in the grain of wheat contains the instructions for the energy from the sunshine to combine the rainwater and CO2 by photosynthesise into carbohydrate as new ears of corn.

i.e. more wheat. A similar process occurs in trees to make more wood

Any increase of the CO2 level in the atmosphere will increase the yield of wheat per acre.
As a rough example the CO2 from one ton of jet engine exhaust could become an extra 1,500 loaves of bread.
Reducing the CO2 level will give a lower yield of food per acre. Halve the CO2 level that we have now and it is estimated to just about extinguish most of the life on earth

The Hockey Stick Curve

We now come to Dr Michael Mann’s infamous Hockey Stick Curve. This claims that CO2 levels have increased to dangerous levels since 1750 causing Global Warming. Mann’s paper was based on tree ring growth and a set of data and codes that he has refused to make public. His paper was published in Nature – one of the most respected scientific journals. Such journals always require all that data related to a paper must be put into the public domain to enable other scientists to repeat the claims to confirm them. Nature published it anyway – a very strange and unique decision by the editor that has seriously damaged its reputation. The Hockey Stick Curve requires the removal from the historical record of the Medieval Warm period, when the Vikings colonised Greenland and grapes were grown in Durham, and the ‘mini ice age’ of the 1750s’ when the Thames regularly froze over. It should also be noted that the mathematics Mann used would give a hockey stick curve if numbers were randomly taken from a telephone directory.
Although now thoroughly discredited the Hockey Stick Curve is still used, and regularly quoted, by the Environmentalists as if were valid.
The Greenhouse Theory is based on reflected infra-red radiation from the earth vibrating the CO2 molecules and heating them up. There is far too little CO2 in the atmosphere to have any significant effect.
So why is there so much political excitement (bordering on hysteria at times among the ecotards?) to reduce the CO2 level in our atmosphere despite the overwhelming objective evidence that it is not a significant problem?
It was started, and has been continued, by somewhat panicky and very arrogant ‘Environmentalists and Intellectuals’ with rather narrow agendas. They are driven by their passionate contempt for the industrialised society and intense pique with the increasing consumerism of the lumpen public .
They have achieved considerable influence with their fellow ‘Intellectuals’ and politicians, whose understanding of science seems limited to say the least.
It is also a very good ‘scare’ story to keep the public in a continual state of anxiety and easy remove more Individual Freedoms – to save the world.
The Environmentalists have invested so much personal reputation in the Greenhouse Gas scare now that it is nigh on impossible to admit they have grossly overstated the problem.
Many Industrialists certainly continue to fuel this alarm. However their ‘crime’ is essentially pollution and despoiling the environment – not CO2 emissions.

Always follow the money. Who is earning the megabucks from this scam?

It is a wonderful excuse for politicians to slap on extra charges on the public ‘to save the planet’. They are essentially Stealth Taxes. The taxes on airlines do absolutely nothing to reduce the CO” output from jet engines or ‘Global Warming’.
The Carbon Trading Market is potentially worth trillions of dollars – as long as the governments can regulate and enforce Carbon Trading into general existence. Even at this early stage Carbon Trading is plagued with fraud.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations is packed with personnel who have significant financial interests that rely on the ‘CO2 problem’.
The IPCC have a floating coterie of some 2000 experts who promote AGW and vilify anyone who disagrees with them. Actually it seems that most, by far, of their experts are Environmental Activists. Many of the true scientists are very angry that their input into the IPCC Report on Global Warming was ‘manipulated’ without their knowledge.
The IPCC and politicians are energetically lobbied by commercial companies who are now heavily committed to producing equipment to reduce the level of CO2 in the atmosphere – windmills, stripping CO2 from exhaust gas etc.
Many Universities are reliant on generous grants for research to ‘prove’ that AGW is valid. Investigators who wish to demonstrate that AGW is of very minor consequence do not get grants and are ostracised by the controlling AGW scientific community.
The BBC Pension Fund has some £8 billion invested in CO2 Trading. When AGW is debunked that will take a devastating hit.
The BBC has a coterie of some 20-30 ecotards who hold secret meetings to decide the BBC policy on Climate Change.

Is there Global Warming/Cooling? Yes – of course there is.

Short term heating and cooling is caused by the varying energy being emitted by the sun and the effect of cosmic rays on cloud generation.
Long term is overwhelmingly due to how the earth orbits around the sun and the varying gravitational pull of the planets.
As the earth moves to its furthest from the sun an Ice Age is caused every 100,000 years or so, with a Warm Period in between. We came out of worst of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago and we are now in a warm period. Within about 1000 years we are due to start descending into the next Ice Age. (Vostok ice cores)
Will any of the ‘green’ taxes imposed on us by our governments do anything to change this?

NO! NO! NO! Just as King Cnut could not turn back the tide so the AGW Environmentalists, Intellectuals and politicians cannot alter the orbit of the earth. They are pushing our country further into terrible debt trying to do so. The Global Warming Crisis is an invention of the Club of Rome to generate a crisis that can be used to persuade the public to accept the loss of personal freedoms and more government control ‘to save the planet’.

The big worries we really have are overpopulation, pollution and waste. The Earth can probably cope with about 2-3 billion people so we can all have a decent lifestyle. Even now at 6 billion, and rapidly heading for 10 billion, we do not have enough raw materials and clean water nor safe land to live on, grow food on and keep undeveloped for wildlife.

The solution proposed seems to be for our energetic Western society, with its contracting population, to drastically reduce our lifestyle. Much of it can then be transferred to the third world with their unbridled expanding population. Unfortunately much of the Western energy is being drained out of us by over regulation by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Any reduction in lifestyle will not, of course, be suffered by the Elite Politique – just us lumpen public.

This ‘solution’ will not last long. The exponential increase in population will soon overtake it and even more unsafe land will have to be used.

Very interesting combination of beautifully written English and glaringly poor usage. Someone saying they’re not FROM the UK doesn’t preclude them being here now?.

Like using a decimal as the thousands seperator, the use of the backslash (\) was interesting – it would be much more normal to use the slash (/). On some international keyboard variants, the backslash is one of the standard characters whilst the slash needs a “Shift + something”, making the backslash the more convenient (if gramatically unusual) option. From a quick google, Russian, Italian, some Scandinavian and Canadian French may fall into this category…

Recent events made it clear that the promoters of CGW were executing another GRAND push: the dark message of devastating and real gobal warming is upon us due to mankinds CO2 polution through the many forms of petroleum and coal use.

It is about a comingled cult of these re-distribution nut jobs like Michael Mann etal, the enablers of the Goebbles News Networks, the re-distribution Democrat party.

Facts do not matter to them, the cause is all.

Go to a Earth First meeting in say Washington State and see for yourselves.

Greed does matter, evil is real, and it is a fight to the death of freedom.

Reading 200,000 e-mails done by and for a crime cult will cause a spike in blood pressure and the members here will cheer.

Yet the Democrats in the House and Senate who have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid cojoined by B. Obama to order the vote count and they will march on orders off any cliff near and drag all of U.S. with them.

Fight fire with fire go after them with the knowing that your freedom, way of life and souls are at stake.

Employees paid for by the taxpayer that use facilities for private use are committing theft, any of these emails that are private business no matter how much dirty laundry they show are the property of the tax payers. Theft is theft it can be a paper clip a ream of paper or an email but it is theft of public property. Protect them not, for they think they are a protected species rather than scam artists and thieves.

So publishing public Emails is theft. wayne your head is a very peculiar place. When a government hides public information now that is really a crime. But apparently there are many that believe that hidden agendas within the government are OK. richard windsor and that style of government is not OK with me,

“Many terrible things have resulted from the great climate scam – the debasement of the scientific method, the corruption, the rent-seeking, the greed, the lies, the blighted careers, the malfeasance, the dissemination of ignorance, the waste, the environmental damage – but the worst thing by far is the human misery it has engendered.”

Who cares about socially damaging content? Publish it. All of it. It’s called bringing a gun to a gun fight. Have the radical Leftists ever shied away from the politics of personal destruction? If anything it’s their favorite tactic.

But please, do publish every little bit. Show people what scum you really are.

REPLY: Dear Mr. Brookes. Thanks for illustrating so clearly how academics have become mentally corrupted that politics matters more than truth. For the record, Mr. Brooks is on faculty at the University of Western Australia, the same place that houses conspiracy theory publisher Lewandowsky. Since you think we are all “scum” (even though we are taking the prudent path), after 208 mostly abusive comments here, you are no longer welcome in my home on the Internet, I’m showing you the door. Get out.

Who cares about socially damaging content? Publish it. All of it. It’s called bringing a gun to a gun fight. Have the radical Leftists ever shied away from the politics of personal destruction? If anything it’s their favorite tactic.
————————————-
The difference is we dont need to act like that, we have truth, morality and good hearts on our side, no need to lower ourselves like they do. ;)

Anthony….. I hope that Andy Revkin is invited to see the unexpurgated Climategate 3.0 archive.

I believe his examination would be an honest one and, even were he to see, but never reveal
some of the more vitriolic and personal communications, they would further his understanding of
the corruption within the science. ….Lady in Red

1. Deadly, (or not-politically correct) force is justifiable in the saving of life, limb, or IMO, societal devolution due to “Climate Policy”. 2. The Truth is always a valid defense. 3. Society doesn’t contemplate collateral damage upon third parties due to investigation and prosecution of Perps. 4. The possibility of Ethical and Character revelations possibly being in the offing may well get someone to ‘Flip and Sing’.

“”In a situation like this, “integrity” means only one thing: Let it all out. Redact nothing. Let everyone have a go at sorting and finding.

Protecting the reputation of genocidal tyrants is NOT “integrity”.”

Firstly that would be making the huge assumption that the contact details of everyone mentioned can only be part of Team AGW, and furthermore any association with that group makes them a genocidal maniac. A rather black and white analysis of human nature.

About the letter. There is something about it that make me think it’s a fellow Norwegian that is FOIA, but there is not much about my gut feeling I explain yet. If not Norwegian then maybe Swedish or Danish.

First, we use a point when writing 200.000. But what struck me the most was the word ‘several’ since the norwegian meaning of the word (fler or flere) is widely used. I know I have used the word many times. Another thing is that politicians over here was very quick at suggesting strict enviromental laws and expensive projects without much debate, and that would have been enough motive. Any Norwegian professional that write and read english on a daily basis will have few problems witing a gramatically correct letter. I would be a poor example ofcourse, but then again I’m not professional :)

on Barry Woods’ Update 4:
I wrote a post on the Mann – Monbiot – Marshall axis, and how Monbiot had one of his articles written by the Rapid Reaction Team when the science got too hard.http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=534

I hate to interrupt good clean fun, but honestly, speculating about just who FOIA really is has to be one of the most pointless exercises on the planet. He — or she (all you sexists out there, shame on you) — is obviously intelligent enough to obfuscate their identity, through a few red herrings under the bus, slip in a few “clews” — or not. FOIA could be lurking on this very list, laughing at the speculation or even participating in it, or he/she could be more or less totally divorced from blog participation, perhaps reading them from time to time but never posting or even registered as a participant. The only conclusion I think is justified is that FOIA doesn’t have mad computer skills, because anyone who did would have split the entire file up into messages with formail (or, if necessary because of its format, with a short custom perl script) and run each of them through procmail to accumulate them systematically into topically organized mail folders, rejecting the vast bulk of them in the process. Instead one gets the dreadful feeling that the early work was done inside a large text editor, searching for keywords, and cutting and pasting the messages together by hand.

I repeat — anyone with good systems skills would have the entire file split into individual messages and would have those individual messages split into folders within 48 hours (and still would). The idea that the preliminary work of sorting things out has to be done by hand is just wrong. Only certain humans are of interest. Only certain topics are of interest. Only certain keywords are at all likely to be associated with topics and humans of interest. Once presorted, a reasonably apt human can skim through the POSSIBLY interesting parts of the spool at a rate of hundreds of messages per hour or better just to see if there is anything that should not be seen in them — NOT to assess whether or not there is anything of interest. Expurgated of the mundane, the interesting folders can be published.

I’m still of two minds about the entire Climategate process from the beginning myself. I’m a professional sysadmin (among other things) and going through people’s mail without their explicit permission is a serious ethical violation no matter what the content, although the law makes exception — even mandated exception — when there is suspicion of certain crimes e.g. distributing kiddie porn or snuff flicks. OTOH, the potential damage associated with corruption of science revealed by the communications vastly outweighs that caused by mere child pornography a thousandfold regardless of which way the issue of CAGW is resolved!

Let me be very clear about that. CAGW is an unproven hypothesis because the science is far from settled and the evidence of catatrophe is so weak that not even climate scientists, when properly surveyed (e..g. the George Mason survey) can muster a simple majority in favor of real catastrophe and a significant minority disagree with the hypothesis altogether. That makes no difference whatsoever to the actual objective truth state of the hypothesis itself. Neither has it been conclusively disproven whatever the imaginings of the people on this blog. It remains a possibility, just as the hypothesis of non-catastrophic but somewhat damaging AGW remains a possibility, just as the hypothesis of non-damaging AGW (such as we’ve quite possibly experienced so far) remains a possibility, just as the hypothesis that CO_2 variation in a nearly saturated atmosphere has little to no effect due to nonlinear feedbacks from e.g. water vapor or other aerosols remains a possibility, just as it remains possible that the Bern model for CO_2 itself is erroneous and humans aren’t even primarily responsible for the increases in CO_2 levels in the atmosphere in the first place so that the “A” disappears from all of the hyptheses above (leaving, note well, the continuing possibility of “C”, “not quite C”, or “little to no damage” GW even without the A. Properly conducted science doesn’t jump to a desired conclusion on the basis of personal belief or a desire to save the planet, save the whales, or save the poor people (much as I sympathize with FOAI’s opinion up above on the issue). Frankly, Scarlett, properly conducted science just doesn’t give a damn.

The one really good reason I can see for violating the privacy of the individuals whose mail is in this spool is that it reveals a spectacularly callous and cynical abuse of the entire scientific process, its supreme corruption to political and personal ends. It reveals climate science as a shabby, shabby enterprise, where even those who disagree with the party line of CAGW, ameliorate at all costs however catastrophic are unwilling or unable to publicly speak up for their own beliefs and hence become passively complicit in the public amplification of science that they privately acknowledge is terrible as the basis of public policy decisions that cost all of us dearly.

This is the thing that makes me very, very angry. Possibly angry enough to consider the violation of privacy to be justified. If there isn’t a law, there should be, as just because a con game is built on big lies and played for billions instead of nigerian scam chump changes doesn’t make it any better, it rather makes it worse. How dare people like Ed Cook or Briffa openly mock MBH as terrible science in private instead of “breaking ranks” and openly denouncing it in print, in commentary in journals, in public discussions.

The only reason I can think of is that they are operating on the ethical principle that the ends — convincing the public of CAGW — justify the means — open academic dishonesty. This makes me a lot less interested in defending their right to conceal their implicit participation in a supposedly “scientific” con job. The ends, after all, justify the means both ways if that’s the way you want to play things.

To be fair, I think that a lot of these folks — Briffa in particular — has had it with the games. The most interesting part of the letter Anthony posted above is not the bit he highlighted — is is the content of the Ed Cook letter just beneath it, where Cook makes it very clear that the MWP occurred, that it was as warm as today, and not all the Mann’s horses or all the Mann’s men could make it otherwise, because even tree rings done right clearly tell the tale. Briffa — whose work that clearly showed a MWP was eclipsed by MBH almost instantly (because it was not what the IPCC wanted to see or hear) seems to have finally had enough as well.

The big question is — will they remain silent now that a new, equally sketchy, hockey stick has been created? The statistical problem is very clear — low frequency, low resolution data with terrible statistics creates a picture of the past before the thermometric record. Hi resolution thermometry is stuck on at the very end, and what was noise completely erased from the past becomes the signal of the present, even though if an event like the present had occurred in the past there is now way it would have showed up, not in the data Willis reposted yesterday.

Once again it will be refuted, and once again the refutaion will get scant space in any sort of news media. All that matters is the headline of the moment.

Seth says:
March 14, 2013 at 6:31 am
—-
Seth, I’ve been waiting for a long time now for somebody to explain the propriety of this particular personal email in context, maybe you could help out:

Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise… Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise.
Cheers, Phil

Texas Senator Ted Cruz is to be the last speraker at CPAC in Washington D.C. at 5:15 Eastern time Sat. March 16, 2013.

His D.C. Senate phome number 202-224-5922.
His Dallas phone number where some smart high level long term staff are located who have contact with him often 214-361-3500.

Ted Cruz is not your normal elected type, he is way smart, he is also a normal person, he will listen, he will not back down if he has the truth and facts on his side. Sure it is that this CO2 fraud is one way of undoing the crimes in D.C. regarding this re-distribution cults work iva the climate change hockey stick etal fraud work.

If he can be helped to include some of the CO2 fraud truth in his talk Sat. the media will have trouble in making in disappear.

Like my grand dad often said when we were horse back and some 20 wild yearlings were down in the bottom land of the West fork of the Brazos River , “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained” and off the high bank and down in the brush we would go.

Tucci78 says:
March 13, 2013 at 8:44 pm
At 8:17 PM on 13 March, MattS had served notice:
In other news: Popcorn futures are up 123.4%
Unfortunately, the “sustainable” greenie grafters in the federal government are still subsidizing the crop’s conversion to fuel ethanol.

The release circumstances of CG3 are surely being quietly and thoroughly investigated by highly motivated professional journalists of the traditional MSM. Their confidential and high motivation is surely to be the first to out Mr FOIA. It would make their careers.

Add to the MSM below-the-radar activity the very likely quiet discussions between UEA CRU and authorities. Discussions surely on how to leverage the circumstances of the CG3 release in order to identify Mr FOIA.

What the critical difference is with the CG3 release compared to the previous two is email exchanges.

Several of the ~12 original recipients (of the original CG3 email from Mr FOIA) appear to have had multiple email exchanges with Mr FOIA using initially the email address provided by Mr FOIA for that purpose.

They have become much more vulnerable by doing so.

Surely several if not all of the ~12 recipients are coordinating their activities which again increases vulnerability to investigation.

I think to the MSM and UEA CRU / authorities the situation should appear as a likely breaking point to solve the CG case.

When Mr FOIA shifted his burden to bloggers I think an unbalancing has occurred which gives advantage to the establishment.

I’m a Brit and I travel extensively in Europe and the Far East. The English seems far too good to be English from someone speaking as a second language. … This makes the use of the phrase “There is life outside the Anglo-American sphere” a conundrum. Seems to me that FOIA is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

Totally agree! And, I’m also struck by the length of the text. In Climategate II there were 137 words (from the author). In climategate III there are nearly 1000. More importantly, they style is no longer that of some software engineer but (despite the assertions to suggesting a lack of skill in the English) the text is much more fluid and lively and far more of interest to a wider audience. Much more thought!

This suggests to me [snip]…. (no point speculating). If I’m right we are in for a treat, if not

RGB at 9:12: thanks you. Always enlightening to read your posts. Your views are truly scientific in the best sense of the word. We simply do not know the over-arching truth yet and people need to stop pretending that they do.

I do despair at the “ends justifies the means” attitude of so many here in relation to releasing the lot and sod any colateral damage.

It’s exactly the same mindset that’s been seen in so many of the AGW activists, where their own political / economic / social beliefs are seen to justify any amount of harm – including the very harm that’s being used here to “justify” releasing the emails en-mass.

Seems to me that the object should be about finding the truth, not giving the other side and any innocent bystanders a bloody nose or indulging voyeuristic desires to read Dr Mann’s love emails to Kermit the Frog. Finding the truth does NOT require the release of everything to everyone.

Responding to Tommy at 2:29 yesterday, Anthony Watts said: “If you can scan all 220,000 emails and pronounce it clean in less than 24 hours, please present your plan.”

Different email clients format mail differently; nevertheless I can imagine a computer program to (pre)process the file, resulting in a more orderly and coherent file easier for humans to redact personal details not relevant to the science. I imagine the pre-processing would do such things as:

(1) Assign unique (and chronological) identifiers to each email.
(2) Replace emails quoted in entirety within another email with the email-identifier of the quoted email. (For example, Anthony’s “Second email (added after original post)” contains TWO COPIES of a long email from Edward R. Cook (each beginning with “As rumors often are”.). Such duplications are tedious and disrupt the flow for readers and redactors alike.
(I do not here consider methods of handling emails quoted only in part.)
(3) Replace phone numbers and email addresses with identifiers referencing a master list of phone numbers and email addresses. The master list need not be released to the public; but maintain the relationships of the source data and allow referencing.

Such a pre-processed file would be easier for redactors to work with; and the completed human-redacted file would have a form more useful for the public than many previously released versions of ClimateGale letters.

The best language for this might be Pearl. I would be willing to assist is such an endeavor in C, C++ or Mathematica. Volunteers for such an effort need not have access to the original decrypted file if (a) some typical portions are available or (b) its format is the same as ing CG1 or CG2.

Some of the email I read contain dialog that is consistent with talk among conspirators covering up their misleading and/or fraudulent manipulation of data, research and advocacy science. Someday we will return to governance that includes an ethical and honest Department of Justice. When that occurs, The shadow of the Federal False Claims Act will loom large over them.

“The writer could know that entertainment media is the source of “over and out” and write it jokingly to mean “it’s over and I’m outta here.” For many, this story is ‘entertainment media’.”

Actually, that phrase was early military radio speak meaning “I am now done with this conversation and no more communication is pending.” After each utterance in radio communication, the speaker says “Over” meaning “It’s your turn to respond because I have finished that sentence.”

“Over and out” meant “I am finished. Signing off now.”

This little explanatory note from FOIA is her/his personal introduction and swan song all in one. It means please don’t ask for more direct contact as I am signing off and will not be communicating again – at least not from this address.

“Coziness with political activists”? That kind of find will and has gotten you no traction. Activism is fully allowed on one side, you just have to be on the proper team.

Instead, let’s get our own activism going to counter it.

In the same way, all this talk about not being funded by big oil and Republicans, even from the leaker dude, is counterproductive. Every time a skeptic says “I’m not…..” they score for the enemy. One side of the argument has gotten massive funding for decades; the skeptic side must be now funded buy whomever will fund it; it matters not who. Stop being proud of not being backed by funding. Instead, get funding.

All you people who don’t have any potential legal exposure in this thing and are demanding that the password be released, stick a sock in it, willya?

The emails as released in episodes 1 and 2 were cleansed for personal information. Those released recently have not been. The legal situation is different. The recipients of the password have been entrusted with a certain responsibility. It’s not your ass that’s on the line.

Canadians and Australians often use US spelling. The tone seems culturally British.

IF this missive was not written as camouflage–which it would be if the hacker were Chinese, for instance–then it suggests FOIA was someone conversant in climatology, at least to the extent of having taken courses in it. That would have been necessary to sort out the first release. Perhaps a worker in the IT department.

If you use say MS Word and set the language to US English – then the wordprocessor will ensure that you use US English and flag all the ‘UK English’ as epelling errors. Anyone who has worked in intenational companies, intitutions and environments will pick up the idioms of other nations and be able to use them (even unwittingly) to hide their country of origin.

Although it is tempting, I think we should restrain the natural tendency to try to identify FOIA there will be people without his best interests at heart who are hard at work doing just that; the last thing we should do is assist.

In my earlier comments I should have discussed Shakespeare a bit more. One of the comic themes running through Shakespeare is his use of linguistic misunderstandings. Different “classes” in his time spoke separate forms of English. Much comedy results from a “high born” and a “low born” having a conversation and both leaving with completely different ideas about what had just been discussed. Englishmen of Shakespeare’s time continually found themselves in front of that problem, facing it continually in their daily lives.

FOIA mimics Shakespeare. His Indian persona speaks what I will call “colonial English of the nineteenth century”. His readership, using a different type of English thinks his persona a poor English speaker. (Also his persona throws in a few example of Indian cultural “thinking” expressed in English — sounding rather funny. (As I said in my other post in English we balance two things whereas this Indian persona thinks of balance as involving multiple things.)

Anyway FOIA has read Shakespeare with more than the usual understanding.

I might add.. that Mark Lynas has recently said – Halls of Shame are shameful, stepped down from a group that had a Hall of Shame.. and has said (ref greenpeace involvement in IPCC renewables report I’m a denier like Mcintyre too..

and some greens call him a chernobyl death denier, for being pro-nuclear..

A handful of people set themselves up as purveyors of truth and justice. Even with all the good work they have done I doubt they are worthy of that tile. Justify it any way you like but it all boils down to “we know better than you”. Sound familiar? Be careful or you may become the monsters that you hate.

“How many times has the weatherman told you stories that made you laugh?
You know its not upto the Politicians and leaders, when they do things by halves.
Who gets the job?
Of pushing the knob.
Thats what responsibility you draw straws for if your mad enough.”

Fort Worth Star-Telegram – June 13, 2001
“America needs to become the leader in environmental care. In order to quiet the deniers of global warming in his own party, who are increasingly beginning to sound like flat-earthers, President Bush needed some strong ammo……”

Tom G(ologist): “that phrase [over and out] was early military radio speak”

You are mistaken. I was trained as a radio operator in the U.S. Army in the ’60s and worked in that capacity for a year. “Over” means “over to you,” “out” means “out of the conversation.” “Over and out” makes no sense. The last operator to speak says “this is [callsign], out,” or just “[callsign], out.”

If there aren’t too many people who hold the password (it seems like only a handful), and if there is any risk of the data being “put back in the bottle” by people who can “get to” those few holders of the password, I suggest releasing the password NOW as another encrypted text. It would be an insurance policy that if any strong arm tactics are used against any of the other holders, immediate release of all.7z is guaranteed.

Don’t kid around with this. There really are $Trillions at stake here, and there are some incredibly huge investors in the Climate Industrial Complex that don’t want to see their stock crash. They are willing to commit millions of people to poverty and an early death, and do so without batting an eye. They have spent decades engineering the “supporting documentation” for the legalized theft that is a CO2 tax, and are on the cusp of realizing their dreams of limitless wealth while making the rest of us “sustainable”. Do you really think they give a rat’s ass about any of you? They want to make an example of someone. Insure yourself.

Anthony,
This is extremely good advice and everyone with the password should do as Michael proposes allowing anyone to ‘pull the pin’.

If there aren’t too many people who hold the password (it seems like only a handful), and if there is any risk of the data being “put back in the bottle” by people who can “get to” those few holders of the password, I suggest releasing the password NOW as another encrypted text. It would be an insurance policy that if any strong arm tactics are used against any of the other holders, immediate release of all.7z is guaranteed.

Don’t kid around with this. There really are $Trillions at stake here, and there are some incredibly huge investors in the Climate Industrial Complex that don’t want to see their stock crash. They are willing to commit millions of people to poverty and an early death, and do so without batting an eye. They have spent decades engineering the “supporting documentation” for the legalized theft that is a CO2 tax, and are on the cusp of realizing their dreams of limitless wealth while making the rest of us “sustainable”. Do you really think they give a rat’s ass about any of you? They want to make an example of someone. Insure yourself.

…we have Ian W at 12:00 pM On 14 March advising Mr. Watts:

This is extremely good advice and everyone with the password should do as Michael proposes allowing anyone to ‘pull the pin’.

No. Precisely no. With the password encrypted specifically for the purpose of releasing it in retaliation against those thugs (warmist partisans or government officers) who initiate actions against Mr. Watts or the other people to whom FOIA has confided the all.7z password, even the least threat of the password’s exposure could be – would be – treated as extortion.

The only way for the dozen or so recipients of FOIA’s communications containing this password to avoid being treated as “terrorists” by the carbon-taxing corruptocrats is to put that password (and therefore the total content of the all.7z file) into the public domain.

As long as there are identifiable people who hold knowledge of this encryption key, they will be held specifically responsible by government goons capable of (and demonstrably disposed to) making those knowledge holders “disappear” into night and fog.

This password is too hot for any mere private citizen to hold. The only protection for men like Anthony Watts and the other recipients of the still-anonymous FOIA’s message on this matter is to get that password – and therefore every last element in the all.7z archive, the potential personal embarrassment of allegedly innocent communicants be damned – open to full and unfiltered scrutiny by anyone who cares to look.

Important update: see David Holland comment at Climate Audit which indicates one reason why it is of vital importance to sort out what is in the complete CG3 release. Even though the CRU scientists skated past the Climategate inquiries free of any real investigation of violations of FOI and environmental disclosure laws, it remains relevant (in moral, political, and professional terms) to document and evaluate whether there was illegality (I think it’s quite obvious there was, as the UK’s Information Commissioner confirmed).

It is still important to establish exactly what was done and not done, by whom, in terms of scientific practice and also legal and ethical behaviors. Click link for the full comment with more links:

“…You may recall that Jones said Briffa should say he did nor get any responses. Someone must had said it because the UEA responded that the information was not held. It was however, and Briffa, Jones and Osborn all knew it was, so a criminal offence was committed by one or more of them.

In CG1, Mr FOIA told us that on 28 July 2006 Briffa had received at least four responses and in CG2 that, on 28 July 2006,Briffa received Steve’s response in roundabout way that Wegman and NRC should be cited. Last week the UEA released an email (in the extract file) that shows that Briffa received seven earlier responses on 16 July 2006. This email was separately copied to Osborn.

The other circumstantial evidence that we now have makes it impossible for the UEA to claim its refusal on 20 June 2008 and again on 26 January 2010 was unintentional. I am sure there may be more in CG3 to show the wilful criminality.”

He released some scathing emails
He sent out an encrypted file
His goal it was to derail
The warmists for a while
He quelled Copenhagen and Cap and Trade
He turned dark night into day
He made those scathing emails a torch to light the way

When warmists control the media fear fills the land
A cry went up for a man with guts to expose their crooked hand
They needed a man who was brave and true with justice for all as his aim
Then on the blogs a man released a password
And no one knows his name, yes no one knows his name

I would like to thank you for your contribution to humanity. I have hoped for a long time that you would release the final batch of emails so the public would have even more visibility of what was done behind the scenes. I always thought that I’d like to thank you and buy you a beer for your effort and for the personal risk you took (not that a beer even begins to compensate you). However, since that’s all I can do and since you provided a bitcoin account, I will deposit the equivalent of beer into your account.

It can be helpful to review the first email subjects posted by Mr. FOIA, as reminders of what stood out to him from early exposure to Climategate files. This includes references to some nice chunks of climate science history:

pottereaton says: “All you people who don’t have any potential legal exposure in this thing and are demanding that the password be released, stick a sock in it, willya? “

The simple fact is that if the password just happens to fall into the public domain, no one is “responsible”…. except in a general sense that the UEA brought it upon themselves by failing to comply with the FOI law forcing amateurs blow the whistle in a less than ideal manner.

If however some people (as you suggest) spend time removing personal information and then release the emails … they are responsible. And the real irony is that the harder people try to do “right” thing, the more they are putting themselves at risk.

Yes in a perfect world we should protect the privacy of people in the email. But in a perfect world, the UEA would never have broken the law.

So personally, if I had received this poison chalice I would wish to hastily and anonymously release the password.

Or let me put it another way. In all the time that sceptics have been viciously attacked. Had their jobs, careers put on hold. When certain people were threatening concentration camps for “deniers”. Did even one person in these emails stand up for our rights even though we have been proved right and them wrong?

Suggestion – this thread is getting very unwieldy. Commnetary abouut FOIA as a person and about the e-mails (s)he has released are interspersed and the lack of nesting makes it even more difficult than normal to follow a chain of discussion.

Perhaps a split into different components is now called for? Otherwise we are in for a very ‘garbled’ time.

First you need a bitcoin wallet. You can get one at https://blockchain.info/wallet or many others. Then you need to chose a bitcoin exchange that suits how you wish to convert the currency of your choice into bitcoins. I selected one that allows me to transfer money directly from my bank account. You provide the currency and your wallet and they put the bitcoins into your wallet. After that, you simply transfer the bitcoins from your wallet into FOIA’s wallet. The first time takes a while, but once it’s set up, it’s very easy. Use google to locate potential wallets (the one I referenced works fine) and potential exchanges.

For everyone who is badgering Anthony to release the password, unless or until someone else does so, Anthony is within his right to withhold it. It’s his choice to decide to release an email or not and whatever choice he makes, he will have to live with it, so give him a break. We’ve waited a long time for these emails to be released. It won’t hurt anyone to wait a little longer.

This exemplifies what I’ve been saying about all this being Bernysian mass manipulation. These are the tactics used 60 years ago when fluoridation of water was imposed on the US water supply.The chemicals used were and are now, poisons, Influential people were paid to shut up, a huge fraud was perpetrated and anyone who argued got called a John Bircher, anyone remember that? First it was to get women to smoke bu conflating a male sex symbol and the right to vote,, then it was fluoridation and now it is global warming. Brought to you by the late, but still powerful, Edward L. Bernays, Freud’s nephew! See the century of Self on Youtube, 8 parts and a terrific documentary..

nutso fasst says:
March 14, 2013 at 11:53 am
Tom G(ologist): “that phrase [over and out] was early military radio speak”

You are mistaken. I was trained as a radio operator in the U.S. Army in the ’60s and worked in that capacity for a year. “Over” means “over to you,” “out” means “out of the conversation.” “Over and out” makes no sense. The last operator to speak says “this is [callsign], out,” or just “[callsign], out.”
——————————————–
I’m glad someone else has this experience. I wasn’t sure if it was unique to certain countries. I was a radio operator in the South African defense force and our transmission ending was, as you said, “callsign-out”. I remember in the early days of training a staff sergeant climbing all over some kid for using the “over-and-out” ending (along with his best imitation of an American accent)…never again…for any of us.

“I surely hope Mr. FOIA is joking about using Bitcoin, as I would hope he would not be duped into using an electronic “currency” that can be hacked, hijacked and manipulated, and has no real monetary value.”

Poptech, just because bitcoins have no value to you, doesn’t mean they have no value to someone else. Bitcoins are very handy and this is a perfect example.

JanSmit says:
March 14, 2013 at 4:42 am
Having skimmed the comments, I have to say there’s one glaring omission in all the guesses as to FOIA’s nationality. As a translator from Dutch to English, I can’t help sensing a Dutch mind at work.
—————–
This was my first thought as well. I lived in Holland for a year and the correspondence I had with my Dutch colleagues was very similar to this. The command of English was strong, but there would be bits here and there that would seem odd and out of place.

The Dutch use of points and commas for numbers is opposite of the US, which is consistent with FOIA’s usage in this and previous emails.

Two other things I noticed about the character of the Dutch (compared to my fellow Americans):
1) They have a strong moral sense of right and wrong, and are quick to point out perceived injustices.
2) They are incredible direct. If you ask them a question they will give you an honest answer whether you like the answer or not.

JanSmit says:
March 14, 2013 at 4:42 am
Having skimmed the comments, I have to say there’s one glaring omission in all the guesses as to FOIA’s nationality. As a translator from Dutch to English, I can’t help sensing a Dutch mind at work.
—————–
This was my first thought as well. I lived in Holland for a year and the correspondence I had with my Dutch colleagues was very similar to this. The command of English was strong, but there would be bits here and there that would seem odd and out of place.

The Dutch use of points and commas for numbers is opposite of the US, which is consistent with FOIA’s usage in this and previous emails.

Two other things I noticed about the character of the Dutch (compared to my fellow Americans):
1) They have a strong moral sense of right and wrong, and are quick to point out perceived injustices.
2) They are incredible direct. If you ask them a question they will give you an honest answer whether you like the answer or not.

As a beer-swilling redneck of dubious ancestry, I have to say that FOIA seems to me to be more of beer-swilling redneck than anything else. The evidence is obvious: I am drinking beer right now.

Mr FOIA has given us – again – a fantastic amount of information. He (he signed off as Mr, so he or she, I’m going with that) – He asked for one thing only. Not to publish the password. That should be respected. As eager as we all are, let’s not put the boot in.

He could have sold the password and his silence to the alarmists for $millions. Respect this man, people. Please.

The reason is contained in FOIA’s message, too much at stake to worry about mundane personal issues.

Assange was releasing information that put national security at risk and has a lot of support, often from increasingly liberal minded academic quarters.

==================================================================
The end does not justify the means. That FOIA released the info in such a way as to avoid personal harm to those in the emails by info that has nothing to do with the perversion of honest science shows FOIA’s integrity. Just because “they” used any means to reach the predetermined end of CAGW does not justify personally harming them beyond punishment for actual criminal activity and/or professional embarrassment and/or being discredited for being so unethical.
We shouldn’t be out for “An eye for an eye” but rather “The truth for a lie”.
I don’t know who else got the password but it’s in good and honest hands with Anthony.

I do wish folks would stop trying to zone in upon or ‘out’ Mr. FOIA….. it’s hard to resist the speculations about his nationality and profession etc. but as the Hero of Climategate it should be left to him/her whether to come forward or not.

Either the letter from FOIA is indeed fairly natural and spontaneous (in which case people are trying to narrow down the pools of candidates), or else it may be full of misdirection and Mr. FOIA is clever enough to make a lot of people waste their time and energy.

btw, every attribute discussed such as punctuation and style, etc. could easily be put out there as misdirection. A native English speaker of some sophistication would know how to do these things to appear non-native, and any denizen of the WorldWideWeb can now do much better than Peter Gleick (with his sorry record before them).

This kind of speculation seems pointless unless it should actually lead toward real candidates in which case we are bringing potential harms to Mr. FOIA. I have \\\\ easily available on my own keyboard (it’s a commonly sold laptop by one of the largest PC OEMs). While I do not ever use it myself, I am well aware (before this week) that it is used by certain kinds of programmers, so if I wanted to write a document that might misdirect people toward thinking I was of a programming background I might use that key, yet it would not actually indicate anything much about me except that I knew enough at least to be able to misdirect in that way).

Now, given that the ‘hit and run’ marketing Mosher we have all come to love and trust at WUWT is now in charge of the DB. Can I get this straight – we shall now allow him to decide just what we are allowed to see of CG3. Yea – That’ll work. I really trust Steve not to remove anything that contradicts his, often bizarre, view of the world.

Back up the thread I defended the general idea that ‘the dozen’ should work their way through the material and release what is important and dump the personal stuff. Now Mosher is ‘the king pin’ of what we should see and what we should not. Well I think the plan has just crashed. Mosher will never tell me what I should read and what I should not. Release the password – I now vote ‘no’ to the ‘we know what’s best for you’ ballot. Mosher does not represent me. I do not trust him. Unless I see the raw material then a Mosher ‘view’ of the material will never satisfy.

I really can’t believe that you are allowing this guy to manage the process. Right up until now I had trust that, of the 200k e-mails, people I trust would weed out what was relevant and what was not. Now Mosher is in charge of the DB. Sorry – don’t trust him. How will we ‘peasants’ ever trust that what we are seeing is real?

CG3 is now a POS managed by one of the most bizarre individuals to crop up in recent years. A man who will defend the faith to the point of what?

Fine – give us a few crumbs authorised by Steve. I trust that his DB management skills won’t delete the wrong communications.

I have to say that Michael Mann’s browbeating bullsh*t against the WSJ is fantastic. He’s doing a great job…. at that. In order to call him on it, you would have had to have been completely on top of every bit of information that was secret at the time. Does anyone know if the browbeating worked?

The latest mannian outburst is against a journalist who dared to ask questions as if her questions were misrepresenting “the science of climate change”… LOL
What a freudian lapsus… No Mickey, the science is about climate, period; when it changes, when it is stable for a certain duration, but not about “climate change”. It is called climatology. Learn it when you have time between conferences and activist conferences…

Glad to see someone else recognizing the patterns. The charts I have been showing include CO2 derivative versus temperature, which shows that CO2 is related to temperature by the differential equation

dCO2/dt = k*(T – To)

with no room for significant anthropogenic forcing in that relationship. Integrating that relationship gives a very close match to observations, as it must because of the uniqueness of solutions of differential equations.

And, the detrended global temperature average, which shows that temperatures have been following the same basic pattern for over a century of trend plus ~60 year cycle, and that pattern shows no divergence due to markedly increasing CO2.

People get tied up all in knots with convoluted thinking, piling the BS higher and deeper in order to rationalize their biases. But, at the end of the day, one has got to be able to pass elementary sanity checks such as these plots provide before one can proclaim one’s complex models valid.

John Brookes says:
March 14, 2013 at 8:16 am
But please, do publish every little bit. Show people what scum you really are.

REPLY: Dear Mr. Brookes. Thanks for illustrating so clearly how academics have become mentally corrupted that politics matters more than truth. For the record, Mr. Brooks is on faculty at the University of Western Australia, the same place that houses conspiracy theory publisher Lewandowsky. Since you think we are all “scum” (even though we are taking the prudent path), after 208 mostly abusive comments here, you are no longer welcome in my home on the Internet, I’m showing you the door. Get out.

Regards, Anthony Watts.
————————————————————————————-
Geez, I wish Jo Nova would smack him down like this. Nice work AW.

Now, given that the ‘hit and run’ marketing Mosher we have all come to love and trust at WUWT is now in charge of the DB. Can I get this straight – we shall now allow him to decide just what we are allowed to see of CG3. Yea – That’ll work. I really trust Steve not to remove anything that contradicts his, often bizarre, view of the world.
—————
I think you ought to read more carefully.
Here’s what Steven Mosher said on the Blackboard:

steven mosher (Comment #111348)
March 14th, 2013 at 9:23 am

I see Lucia.

Hmm.
1. I have the password.
2. Nobody will ever get it from me.
3. I have the mails.
4. I will release mail on a case by case basis to any interested party who is mentioned by name in the mail provided there is no personal information in the mail.. a judgement call of course. One person, has requested this. he got one mail that said absolutely nothing about anyone but him.
5. I won’t release all the mails, they need to be gone through.
6. I’ll finish some prototype databse work and walk away
a) a concordance; ( code for it if you have the mails)
b) a deconstructed header: ( code for it if you have the mails)

Then I’m walking away. Reading through the first 2000 mails was something I did on autopilot over the course of 2 days. It was a puzzle, prove that these mails are real or fake. They stick in my head. I could not bring myself to read CG2.0 and can’t see reading CG3.0 except for the 90 or so mails that refer to me. Even there it’s the past and I’m not really terribly interested in it. For me I have reduced CG3.0 to a programming problem, not an emotional thing.

I have to be careful what I put in my head because it stays there. Obviously I dont watch horror films and sifting through CRU mails is at once boring, infuriating, and creepy with emphasis on the latter.

and:

steven mosher (Comment #111350)
March 14th, 2013 at 9:35 am

“Hoi Polloi (Comment #111340)
March 14th, 2013 at 2:00 am
@mosher, sorry if I was unclear, I meant to say whether are all people who received the password doing their own forensic work or is there contact between your guys like who’s going to look for what and where, otherwise there could be duplicate research? Otherwise I can understand that there may be a rush who has the first juicy scoops.

No coordinated work. The few people I have talked to are all going to honor FOIA request not to distribute the password.
And nobody wants to just publish all the mails without redaction.
Trivia question: who was the only indvidual to have personal information released in CG 1?

I’m doing a concordance. Actually just the code to compile it and passing that code out. But if you dont have the mails its worthless.
So, no plan no project schedule no agreed approach. Obviously some folks are getting legal opinions ( as we did in the first case ).

Scoops? na. I think the approach will be a slow and prolonged

Imagine word of the week. Where readers request a word and mails that have that word get reddacted and posted.

Traffic for life.

If one was so inclined.

steven mosher (Comment #111351)
March 14th, 2013 at 9:41 am

‘It’s just a matter of time before all the personal stuff comes out as well.
Don’t you have anything useful to do?”

1. In my mind the only way to prevent personal stuff coming out is to
get the tools put in place to allow for a redaction project.
2. I consider that useful.
3. the code took 15 minutes. Its not pretty, it gets the job done.
it even uses loops and mapply() woo hoo.
4. Tonights code will probably take 45 minutes.

So, donate an hour of my time to try to keep the personal stuff off the web. Worthwhile and fun.

If I’m understanding this correctly, he’s working on some code to hand off, presumably to Anthony or Lucia or whoever has the zip and password and cares to mess with it, and then walking away.

nutso fasst says:
Tom G(ologist): “that phrase [over and out] was early military radio speak”
You are mistaken. I was trained as a radio operator in the U.S. Army in the ’60s and worked in that capacity for a year. “Over” means “over to you,” “out” means “out of the conversation.” “Over and out” makes no sense. The last operator to speak says “this is [callsign], out,” or just “[callsign], out.”

I side with Tom for the following reason: My dad was trained in the U.S. Army Signal Corp in 1943, and would constantly use “Over and Out” to mean that his last transmission is “Over” and his ability to receive messages in the immediate future would be impossible because his ability to receive would be “Out.” “Standing By” meant that his ability to receive further messages in the near future would be possible because the operator would be standing by or near the receiver. As a family we understood and used this protocol during the decade of the 1960s with our CB radios and walkie-talkies when we were prospecting for uranium. But around 1995 when I next had occasion to use a CB radio to talk with truckers, I was roundly laughed at for using such out-dated lingo!

Anyone who reacts like that has a 99% probability of having something too hide. I for one sincerely hope there is a piece of gold somewhere in those 220,000 emails which will bury this pompous litigious fraudster once and for all.

Nothing should shock at this point, but reading the response of a taxpayer funded scientist to a journalist representing America’s largest circ newspaper comes close. Mr. Mann’s initial response is an attempt at power shaming of the first order. He thus brings shame to his office and institution. Where are his supervisors? I do hope the reporter ‘copied them in’ on the exchange.

I also am in the camp of releasing the password.
We (as in skeptics) did not publish private information in govt emails.
We then, will not and cannot be responsible for the blow back wherever it may fall.
That and all fault lies with the original perpetrators, period.
Any “editing” then becomes the editors problem.

There is no obligation by anyone down the trail of information.
There was, however, an obligation from the folks at the top to be honest. To produce information that would allow reasonable people to make reasonable decisions.
To have ones personal life free from professional fallout is not a reasonable expectation, not one anyone one of us can or should guarantee.
You got dealt a hand and you played your cards and if you were not honest, it is on you.

if even a fraction of the 0.01% of the remaining emails have any interest outside of the climate bubble I will be very surprised… no conspiracies about Mosher sitting on them please.. most is what you would expect day, to day stuff.

To be honest I’m more concerned about UK energy policy, than emails released 4 years ago. We in the climate bubble will no doubt be interested, the public are interested in expensive energy, and damaging climate policies. (or soon will be)

noaaprogrammer (March 14, 2013 at 2:46 pm) on “over and out”: suggests to me that the phrase used in old movies might well have come from ’30s and ’40s 2-way radio conventions, later abandoned, so now obsolete and “wrong.”

I suspect Tucci78 (March 14, 2013 at 2:10 pm) is right that the password is a hot potato, and a source of potential liability for the twelve who now hold it; probably best to release the whole mess to the world and let the chips fall where they may.

“I will several batches” sounds to me like the result of a dropped word or phrase, not an archaic use of ‘several’ as a verb.

@Chad:The omission of articles might also reflect practice in the Scandinavian languages and Romanian and Bulgarian, all of which suffix the definite article to the noun – where it would more easily be lost in translation. If I had to hazard a guess as to FOIA’s nationality, it would be one of these (won’t be more specific in the interest of not clueing in the alarmies to his/her location)

It might, but I really doubt it, as a native Scandinavian speaker I’m pretty sure that this is an uncommon error to make. Anyway, I agree that it isn’t really a good idea to continue the forensic work – I respect “FOIA”s wish to be anonymous.

Mr. Watts,
Being a bit of a sceptic…….Does anyone really think that the FBI and Homeland security, never mind the CIA, is already combing through the emails send by Mr. FOIA to the “key holders” and checking their traffic? If we can read Taliban traffic, local stuff should be a cinch.
Just a thought.

No one will read this because it’s so far down the list, but I just want to record my admiration for you, Anthony. You are truly a hero. Well, that’s about all I want to say. Much love.
_________________
bears repeating…

Sun Spot says:
March 13, 2013 at 9:46 am
Due to the complicity of the M.S.M. in the cAGW media meme they will NOT report on this. Censorship by guilt association and left wing anti-science bias.

Actually, the “Ministry of Truth” is all inclusive. Fauxnews is not covering this, as an example. It looks like the net is our only salvation as all media sources sing the from the same hymn book, and in MoT hymn book you won’t even get “Move along, nothing to see here….” for this seismic story.

Now which pill was it? Red or blue?
————————————————-

KITEFREAK says:

I was going to say that sunspot was spot on. You both are.

I agree with other commenters that we shouldn’t act as an army of armchair sleuths, by trying to guess his identity and jeopardising the cover of FOIA – essentially doing the work of people who would wish him harm, for them.

But the people who would wish him harm have plenty of resources to throw at these things and will linguistically analyse that statement of his ’til the computers have smoke coming out of the back of them. What will infuriate these ‘boffins’,is that the bitcoin reference (which I agree was meant ironically by FOIA) shows that this person is a very tech-savvy and has a good moral compass by giving publicity to bitcoin, since it is a decentralised, open-source,distributed-computing, non-corruptable currency with limited issuance potential where transactions do not go through the banks. WordPress and Reddit accept bitcoin payments. Bitpay (one of the new bitcoin payment providers) just celebrated it’s 10,000 (then thousandth) live bitcoin payment with zero fraud amongst them. Point is, bitcoin is the middle finger to the establishment, so well done FOIA, some of us got the joke. In fact it’s more than that – it’s a nightmare for them; people being able to transact amongst themselves, securely, without going through the banks? They can’t have that can they?

So I’ll credit FOIA’s bitcoin address once I’ve bought mine, which I’ll be doing once the price stabilises, or at least gets off the ramp it’s on. It’s easy to setup a bitcoin wallet online once you’ve looked into it a bit. Took me a few hours of research I’ll admit. I set up a wallet on blockchain.info the other day, before I saw this news.

Anyone who likes my comment please send funds to my bitcoin address:
kdsjbg3ke5r04398503. That’s a joke, by the way! I just typed randomly on the keyboard!

That joke was done in the same style as the FOIA reference, though I’m sure his address is genuine (humour’s a complicated thing sometimes, and often loses a lot in the translation. Bitcoin, on the other hand, loses nothing in the decryption).

I hope Elmer and the crew do another song. This is folk history in the making.

And of course, I never discount the possibility that FOIA is actually ‘working’ for TPTB and we are all being led a merry dance.

Mr. Watts,
Being a bit of a sceptic…….Does anyone really think that the FBI and Homeland security, never mind the CIA,rnet

Yes, because they can not decrypt the information. The fear is that someone of the FOIA’s supposed 12 are compromised. The intelligence officers loves going after people, and they might have already. The key issue is to not trust anyone and encrypt that key, release it on the internet, and have a backup plan. FOIA had a backup plan for the emails. I hope the people with the key is not stupid enough to think that they are safe, and make similar arrangements. I do hope FOIA left instructiones. It might all be over for all we know.

rgbatduke says, (March 14, 2013 at 9:12 am): “…going through people’s mail without their explicit permission is a serious ethical violation … the potential damage associated with corruption of science revealed by the communications vastly outweighs that caused by mere child pornography … violating the privacy of the individuals … the violation of privacy …”
=============================================================

There is no violation of privacy, because their work mail accounts are not private and those “scientists” are not supposed to use them for any private purpose. Their work mail accounts are a part of their work and do not belong to them. Their mails on those accounts do not belong to them either and can be legally examined any time by the employers without any permission of those “scientists”. Your “privacy” argumentation is completely irrelevant to the case.

Well, in this case not only employers will read them, but this is another story and has nothing to do with privacy.

“My name is Anne Jolis, and I’m with the Wall Street Journal Europe, based in
London. I’m working on a piece about climate change, and specifically the growing
questions that people outside the field have about the methods and processes used by climatologists and other climate-change scientists – and, necessarily, about the conclusions that result. The idea came from the recent controversy that has arisen once again over Steve McIntyre, the publication of the full Yamal data used in Keith Briffa’s work. This of course raises questions among climate scientists, and observers, about whether the so called “hockey stick” graph of global temperatures , as produced by Dr. Briffa and originally by yourself, was drawn from narrow data which, and then when broadened to include a wider range of available dendroclimatological data, seems to show no important spike in global temperatures in the last 100 year .
——
Mann says: “You don’t seem to be aware of the fact that our original “Hockey Stick”
reconstruction didn’t even use the “Yamal” data.
=====
Seems Mann has a reading comprehension issue.

How many times??? With 220 000 emails involved there’s a good chance that there will be material which is embarassing (or worse) for people completely unrelated to the Team.

Have they discussed potential dirt on their adversaries? Have they shared gossip about other people in the office (non-team members)? Is there information that might harm their families (who have NOTHING to do with any harm they may have caused)? We don’t know, and we don’t need to find out just to make the Team members squirm. #

There’s a very old saying that “two wrongs don’t make a right”. It seems there are a lot of people here who’ve forgotten that.

Gavin must know, Because he writes beautifully, quite elequantly infact, and can’t possible be willingly be sunken down to Hansens ans Manns extreme weather babble. But he bought the crap and now he has no choise but to stick with it, like so many others.

If there is anything we should take away from these emails, except from guilt, anger, fear and flying fingers is those that tried. Those that was lost in a corner but saw no way out. They should be vetted, like they are not by this crowd, and let loose.

We have a situation where good people are held hostage to very bad ideas, and I for one think we should honor the goodness in man and let actions be questions for the law. Where everyone else is let free. Manipulation can happen to us all.

If we wan’t to end this then a way out is way more effective then a blaming finger.

Skiphil
See comments at Lucia’s for what Mosher has been working on:
……
I think you ought to read more carefully.
Here’s what Steven Mosher said on the Blackboard:

===================================================
Mark Bofill, I agree with your take on this, but want to point out for others arriving on the thread that I was not the one taking shots at Mr. Mosher. While I recognize that he finds himself in some controversies on the blogs, I typically don’t know enough to challenge his data work and in any case I have no reason to think he is not approaching these issues with integrity and determination by his own light. I regret that he and others sometimes don’t seem to get along, but I think he deserves much gratitude for his contributions to understanding Climategate and many other discussions around the web. I was only pointing out that he had developed script to aid in the process of sorting out the 220,000 emails, however that task may proceed now.

I don’t have any impression that Mosher is solely in charge of or control of the process now. His own comments note that he is stepping away after preparing the script and condordance to enable others to work. The various bloggers who have the password presumably have or can get access to the zip file, and they can decide what to do from there. Mr. FOIA requested that the password NOT be posted openly so I think that the Hero of Climategate deserves great respect for that request. How the 220,000+ emails will be sorted at this point, few of us have any knowledge. There may be several projects and/or divisions of labor.

Anthony
In regard to Brookes, There is a large servant class of the global warming industry in this country that has waxed arrogant and grown fat on the proceeds of a corrupt and morally bankrupt political class. We have an election in September. And the CAGW gravy train hits the end of the line. The ALP (possible the most corrupt political machine in the western parliamentary systems) will be trounced in the polls by a constituency that can no longer stomach its lies and corruption. Brookes is typical of the class – going out with all the dignity of a trapped rat.

JanSmit: As a translator from Dutch to English, I can’t help sensing a Dutch mind at work.normalnew: About the letter. There is something about it that make me think it’s a fellow NorwegianEspen: I’m not a native English speaker myself, … possible native language to one of the slavic languages (except Bulgarian), the baltic languages or the Finno-Permic languages (Finnish, Saami, Estonian).Enjoying the speculation (Climate Audit) “Climate protection” also translates nicely to Finnish (ilmastonsuojelu, ilmasto = climate, suojelu = protection). I believe there are no equally fitting ways of saying this in swedish, norwegian, danish or german. So that narrows it down a bit. Finnish and Hungarian have some similarities in grammar but I still feel this must be a Finn.Coldish (Climate Audit) ‘Climate protection’ is a literal translation of the common German term ‘Klimaschutz’hro001 (Climate Audit) “The quirks of grammar/sentence structure that some have noticed remind me of the those that one might encounter when talking/writing to a Quebecois and/or other francophone who has become fluently bilingual (but whose mother tongue is French, rather than English). “Oscar Bajner. (I think jokingly) Rules how out England, Wales, Scotland, Americans, French, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Swiss, Scandinavians, & “the rest” (Irish, Antipodean/Canadian) and … by eliminating the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is that our boy is:
South African — Vat Hom, Fluffy! Skrik vir niks boet!wwsthe phrase “It’s easy for many of us in the western world” to me rules out Russia,Ryan says:But the writer does say he is a part of the Western world (so not Indian.. pottereatonCould be a Canadian but I don’t think so. Uses phrases like “game-changer” and “over and out” that while not exclusively American are probably used here more often than elsewhere. Armagh Observatory: Eugene WR Gallun draws attention to the phrase used by FOIA – “Papal Plural” ie “we” meaning himself. It would be strange for a Brit to use this phrase …. We would use the phrase “the royal we” in this context.Reed Coray: he/she has excellent command of the English language. … my gut feeling tells me he/she is from an English speaking environment.Pat Frank: F writes English with a completely American idiom. His syntax also has none of the subtle errors that betray a foreign first language. All-in-all, he’s a native American speaker.DubFOIA’s native language might be revealed in his expression, “hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor.” This awkwardness of this expression in English indicates it is a literal translation from a different language.SimonThe covering note has clearly been machine translated from some other language. Chad WozniakThe omission of articles might also reflect practice in the Scandinavian languages and Romanian and Bulgarian,

Philip BradleyI find it difficult to believe the above wasn’t written by a native English speaker. I’ve read it carefully, and there are none of those small things that result from translating from a foreign language that don’t sound quite right to a native English speaker. Eugene WR GallunIt seems to me –
The persona of FOIA is that of an Indian who has learned English as a second language.

I have to agree with the many comments that call for an end to speculation on the identity of FOIA. I can’t see what the benefit is in that activity.

While there has been much mirth around the efforts of the law enforcement bodies in this, it appears that they have given the search for the ‘culprit’ a real crack and have come up empty-handed. That makes sense. Whoever FOIA is, they clearly have some smarts that would make it very difficult to locate them (or at least prove that they are responsible).

So, if the cops have not been able to track FOIA down, it has to be asked what hope a bunch of commentators have?

Surely it is more productive to look at what FOIA has said about their motives and how we, all in our own little way, can amplify the message.

For me, this chap has been one of the better advocates of my own interest in the whole global warming thing – the effects on the poorest of the world. I am a simple man and I say one thing – electricity for all. The undertones of the alarmist message smells, to me, like it will lead to people who need and deserve an accessible energy source not getting it.

This FOIA chap seems to really get that and is completely motivated by that.

I would suggest that we collectively swing away from the minutia of the ‘science’ of AGW and create a movement around the very simple principle – everyone deserves to have abundant energy and, right now, this can be delivered through carbon based sources – and therefore, that is how it should be delivered.

We should rally against the notion that ANY argument or concern is more important than the welfare of the “millions and billions” who struggle with the lack of a reliable and abundant energy source.

With that as our ultimate message, who really cares about who FOIA is. It’s just not that important. Finding out will not advance the cause one bit.

This is a very, very hot potato. Make no mistake, although quiet, Mann(iacs) and their puppet-masters are currently all up in arms over this, .. behind the curtain. I just hope “The 12” have taken extreme precautions. Perhaps, announcing some sort of automatic public domain release of the password, if things go awry. I would assume software geeks could write such a script in no time flat. This would be a good deterrent for any hard-ball (if not worse) tactics.
Just a thought …

Although I don’t believe that in any of these 200k+ e-mail will be found any solid scientific evidence of wrong doing (hope I’m mistaken), I truly believe it will show a solid pattern of the intent to deceit and suppress opposing views. Perhaps, incriminating correspondence should be compiled in such a fashion to unmistakably reveal this.
Good luck!

I think I might know who FOIA is. Although, not how s/he came by the emails, But as s/he says ‘Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future.’

“nutso fasst says:
Tom G(ologist): “that phrase [over and out] was early military radio speak”
You are mistaken. I was trained as a radio operator in the U.S. Army in the ’60s and worked in that capacity for a year. “Over” means “over to you,” “out” means “out of the conversation.” “Over and out” makes no sense. The last operator to speak says “this is [callsign], out,” or just “[callsign], out.”

I side with Tom for the following reason: My dad was trained in the U.S. Army Signal Corp in 1943, and would constantly use “Over and Out” to mean that his last transmission is “Over” and his ability to receive messages in the immediate future would be impossible because his ability to receive would be “Out.” “Standing By” meant that his ability to receive further messages in the near future would be possible because the operator would be standing by or near the receiver. As a family we understood and used this protocol during the decade of the 1960s with our CB radios and walkie-talkies when we were prospecting for uranium. But around 1995 when I next had occasion to use a CB radio to talk with truckers, I was roundly laughed at for using such out-dated lingo!”

Esoteric to be sure, but I hold federal radio licences in a variety of services. “Over and out” is valid radio-speak. Its meaning is simple and understood by any competent op (regardless of whether it is SOP in their particular service). It simply means “I have completed my xtmsn and am turning it over to you for response. I will not follow up and am signing off as of this transmission.”

First of all, anyone who calls it “Fauxnews” exposes themselves as a closed-minded political bigot who can not accept ever seeing their political slant criticized and who attempts to devalue the source of the criticism in an attempt to invalidate it. Such a person will tolerate information only from one particular view and closes their mind like someone with their hands over their ears going “la la la la” whenever something counter to their desired view is reported.

Secondly, I would be willing to guess that the various media outlets are waiting for something to come of this to be reported. So far the only information we really have is that the password has been released and the emails are being sifted through but we are a bit short of content so far. Until there really is anything substantial above and beyond what has already been released in CG1 and CG2, there really isn’t anything more to say.

As written by the esteemed (no doubt a “legend in his own mind”) Dr. Mann;

“Misrepresenting the work of scientists is a serious offense”

Against WHO ?

Who do I call when someone misrepresents my work, the police, the FBI ? What do I say; “Hello I’d like to report an offense, somebody questioned my conclusions, they should be jailed at once before someone else overhears them…….” Is that a misdemeanor or a felony ?

I thought science (as it used to be) was all about somebody else questioning your conclusions, if they are solid you have nothing to fear. If not, we all may just learn something.

I think the only offense here is against the precious “World Saving” Doctor’s ego……….

It seems to me that there are three dimensions to the conundrum that RC/FOIA has created for Anthony. People’s comments tend to align along one of these dimensions.

The first is a political dimensions. This is far and away the easiest of the three. The emails offer an opportunity to expose the team and turn public opinion more towards the skeptics. If politics were the only consideration, then Anthony should release all of the emails. Score one for our team.

The second dimension is a legal one. In CG1 and 2 RC/FOIA published the emails himself and blogs like WUWT simply re-published material that was already in the public domain. Here, the issue is much more involved. The emails have not been published in clear text. After decrypting the volume, Anthony or one of the other recipients of the password would face the specter of being the first to publish the emails. This is a very thorny issue. I think Anthony needs to get competent legal advice on this. I suspect his legal risks would be substantially diminishes if he simply published the password rather than the emails. I think the worst thing he could do is attempt to “clean up” the emails prior to publishing them. I suspect that would put him in more jeopardy than simple publishing the emails as is.

The third dimension is an ethical one. In a democracy, an individual has a duty to expose corruption in our society. To the extent that the emails show how climate scientists are misleading the public and policy makers, the emails must be published. However, its likely that many of the emails are unrelated to malfeasance. Is it, therefore, ethical to subject the author’s of the emails or the subjects of the content of the emails to potential embarrassment, loss of privacy and public ridicule? Left leaning people always believe that the good of the collective trumps the needs of the individual. Right-leaning people believe that individual rights are paramount. My own preference would be to attempt to prevent/minimize collateral damage.

@ Latimer alder.yeah, I is especially nirked by all this “he says she says”. Most of the time I cant unravel what is a comment and what is a quote. It gets doubly ridiculous when some here quote others quoting others. Then there are ——– and sub-sessions inside a posting and the whole thing looks like yards of verbal diharrea. Diahorreaaerrrr being, as noted, the worlds biggest cause of death.

And what of the general obsession displayed here with trying to out messrs Foyer. This aint some flaming parlour game, this is some person or persons LIFE you are playing with. Get real for flip sake. Suppose one of you buffoons actually does suggest a cast iron identificatioWhither your hero then?

And the sleuthing on show is ridiculous. Like that person who said FOIA shgows grammartoo good not to be a native Enlgish speaker. ROLFMLOPG! How many native Englanders have you spoken to? Themajority of better-educated non-Anglophonesse better grammar than the majority of native English speakers. Andunless you are familiar with anglo-indian euro patoise you hvent a clue how English is spoken in the world beyond the USA. Innit.

Ive a suggestion for you, go read “The Story of O” and try to occupy your Holmesian urges by seeking to unravel the true identity of Pauline Reage, its pseudonymous author. Literary types have been on that case half a century now.

Jimi Bostock at 5:15 pm “I am a simple man and I say one thing – electricity for all.”

It cannot be said any clearer. THIS is what all the impressionable college students should be protesting for (can you protest for something?). That they are instead wasting all their energy on “greenhouse gasses” is a crime against humanity.

Bill Parsons says:
March 13, 2013 at 9:10 am
220.000 emails
Is the period – rather than comma – a solely British numeric convention? Or is it used elsewhere?

The period is NOT a “solely British numeric convention.” In my 73 years I have NEVER seen this in a British document. What it suggests is either a (wider) European source or somewhere such as South African/Boer source.

pokerguy says:
March 13, 2013 at 10:03 am
“ANyone else ever get the fleeting feeling that this could end in some sort of organized violence? I know, I know, it sounds insane. It likely is insane. But the level of anger is such that under the right, repressive circumstances, it seems to me it could happen. I know I’d fight if necessary. And I’m 62 years old.”

I did not agree with Dr Ball’s recent post for exactly this reason. I do think that all the speculation about FOIA’s real identy is likely to be dangerous to him and should cease! Possibly also dangerous to other potential candidates!

I see no purpose or any good in accumulating here a list of ideas, clues and evidence which may lead to the uncovering of the identity of FOIA.

You are doing their dirty work for them.

IMHO the moderators should delete all such posts asap.

– – – – – – – – –

markx,

Of course this is Anthony’s place and he will decide if trying to identify Mr FOIA is off topic wrt the CG3 release.

To say to me, mano e mano, to stop doing free pursuit of due diligence on Mr FOIA’s identity is one thing. You and I can argue that willingly. But for you to advocate stopping any discussion has little worth in open intellectual discourse. I disagree profoundly with your suggestion to censor discussion.

In my personal view => What if a well thought of skeptic located Mr FOIA and exposed him publicly? My reaction would not be critical. The same way I would not be critical of one CAGW believer locating and exposing another CAGW believer who makes an unauthorized release of skeptic info.

The integrity candle burns the same from both ends. N’est ce pas?

By the way, I suggest a scenario where Mr FOIA is actually a member of a team. In that scenario I speculate he is stepping up in his CG3 email for the sake of protecting the team. I think he knows a team of leakers/hackers be easier to identify than a lone perpetrator . . . so perhaps he is providing a distraction away from the team?

. . . I did not agree with Dr Ball’s recent post for exactly this reason. I do think that all the speculation about FOIA’s real identy is likely to be dangerous to him and should cease! Possibly also dangerous to other potential candidates!

Of no consequence in the greater scheme of things, but thank you for using the time-tested neutral-sex pronoun in English: ‘he’ (subject), ‘him’ (object), NOT ‘they’ or ‘them’, unless plural.

We don’t know if FOIA is male or female, but until (and if) we do, it’s ‘he’.

As for speculation, I assume FOIA expects it; mankind loves a good puzzle. But if you think you know the answer, don’t give it away!

Tucci78 says:
The only way for the dozen or so recipients of FOIA’s communications containing this password to avoid being treated as “terrorists” by the carbon-taxing corruptocrats is to put that password (and therefore the total content of the all.7z file) into the public domain.

As long as there are identifiable people who hold knowledge of this encryption key, they will be held specifically responsible by government goons capable of (and demonstrably disposed to) making those knowledge holders “disappear” into night and fog.

This password is too hot for any mere private citizen to hold. The only protection for men like Anthony Watts and the other recipients of the still-anonymous FOIA’s message on this matter is to get that password – and therefore every last element in the all.7z archive, the potential personal embarrassment of allegedly innocent communicants be damned – open to full and unfiltered scrutiny by anyone who cares to look.

Things are not nearly so dire. What point is there be in threatening the small number of identified recipients of the password while FOIA himself has the password and remains anonymous and at large (in his Vatican hideout). I am sure that were the heavens to fall on Anthony and the others then FOIA would step in to ensure that justice was done.

nutso fasst says:
“…The Signal Corps is more about communications systems than communication. Your dad may have picked up “over and out” from TV or movies….”

My dad grew up in a very strict religious household where his father never allowed the children to attend movies, and in turn my dad never allowed TV in our home until 1969 when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. (By then, he thought that there was enough worthwhile history occurring to buy a TV.)
If he didn’t pick it up during WWII, my guess is that he picked it up from a magazine like Popular Electronics to which he subscribed for decades.

I considered the Cop15 Global Carbon Tax to be the third leg of the stool of the New World Order Global Government tax financing structure back in 2009. Remove that third leg and watch what happens, was my goal. Now you see the European Union global regional currency collapsing and the rest of the global regional currencies they had planned going up in smoke. The collapse of the NWO could not have happened without FOIA and the power of the Sun. I like to think I had a little something to do with that situation.

I wonder if those who want to provide all the emails to everyone who wants to read them would feel the same if details of every email exchange they were ever involved in (including as a passive recipient of a copy) was circulated around the globe?

Pretty much all workplaces have a ‘reasonable use’ policy for using office communications (phone, email etc) for personal matters. Accepting that people can only do certain things in business hours, they allow you to make an appointment with your psychiatrist, proctologist or oncologist this way; they don’t mind if you contact your spouse to say you’ll be late home or arrange to pick up the kids; etc etc.

This gives me to wonder if johanna has ever made use of an e-mail account for professional purposes, or even such an account set up by an employer for her job-related activities.

No “reasonable use” policy established in the workplace for the employee’s use of company e-mail accounts ever formally condones personal communications of the kinds johanna is talking about – to make“an appointment with your psychiatrist,” to “contact your spouse” with any kind of potentially embarrassing information, “etc etc.”

Telephone use in this regard is almost universally either admitted or “deliberately overlooked,” but because e-mail communications are not only retained “permanently” on servers but also discoverable evidence in both criminal investigations and civil lawsuits, employers have long since become Enronically focused upon all use of the e-mail accounts they establish for business purposes.

Except under limited circumstances (“Your call may be recorded for quality purposes” articulated every time such a recording is to be made, even if it’s not to be permanently retained in the archives), the practice of recording an employee’s phone conversations is almost nil. But e-mails are another matter, and anyone contending otherwise is arguing either from ignorance or duplicitous intent.

The professional person – by which is generally meant a self-employed medical doctor or attorney or accountant in private practice – is intensely aware of both the canons of his profession covering patient/client confidentiality and issues of professional liability, and has incentive to be as cautious in the use of his “business” e-mail account as he is in the composition of any communication that leaves a paper trail.

Every stinkin’ little bit of the all.7z archive is as much discoverable evidence as if it were the e-mail records subpoenaed from MF Global, for example, in the criminal prosecution of Jon Corzine and his associates, or in a lawsuit undertaken to recover the millions of client funds “disappeared” by these miscreants and malefactors. Their lawful ability to redact or withhold discoverable evidence in the form of e-mail records is nil.

How could it be otherwise for the C.R.U. correspondents whose connivances at unethical conduct were – stupidly, arrogantly, flagrantly – conducted in e-mail communications among their cabal?
————————————————————
Let me deal with this fact-free attack. Tucci does not know me, but is unabashed in his imputations and extrapolations, totally unsupported by a single fact.

Firstly,not only have I had email accounts in both the government and private sectors for decades, I have helped to write policies about their use. He is completely wrong if he claims that personal use of work communication channels is officially prohibited everywhere, but winked at. How he can claim to know something like that about every workplace on the planet is, in any event, the first hint of his grandiose approach.

Then, he assumes that the USA is the world, conveniently forgetting that not only has the password been given to people in several countries, but that US law does not apply in the UK.

We then get a few paragraphs of bloviating “I am a lawyer from the US and I have huge testicles – I can get anything I want, anywhere”. Hilarious. People in other countries, including the relevant jurisdiction, the UK, just giggle at this Elmer Fudd figure.

Elmer Fudd, your fantasies about ‘discovery’ in other jurisdictions (where no doubt you play the crusading attorney) are absolutely irrelevant. What’s more, unless they are considered relevant to the case, emails about picking up the kids from school etc are routinely excluded from discovery.

If you are a lawyer, I would avoid briefing you. Lots of “mine is bigger than yours”, but not much in the way of research or judgement.

Let me deal with this fact-free attack. Tucci does not know me, but is unabashed in his imputations and extrapolations, totally unsupported by a single fact.

Firstly, not only have I had email accounts in both the government and private sectors for decades, I have helped to write policies about their use. He is completely wrong if he claims that personal use of work communication channels is officially prohibited everywhere, but winked at. How he can claim to know something like that about every workplace on the planet is, in any event, the first hint of his grandiose approach.

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

In other words, johanna can claim any fribbling thing she likes as to her personal experience in having “helped to write policies,” but an assertion of this nature without support (or even reasoned argument) is contemptible in its nullity. In corporate and government practices generally prevailing in these United States – and I’ve said nothing whatsoever about anyplace else, but there’s no indication that such policies differ to any significant extent in the U.K. or other anglophone countries – “personal use of work communication channels” will tend to be sharply discouraged if not explicitly forbidden for the reasons I’d stipulated, and which reasons johanna evades.

An employee making use of company or agency time and especially the employer’s material assets, including employer-identified e-mail accounts which set the employer at risk of action under criminal or tort law is not only perpetrating theft of value (as at least one other commenter posting on this thread has observed) but violating the terms of trust in the employee/employer relationship, a breach of ethics.

The plain fact of the matter is that all written materials – even these Web log comments posted under hopefully anonymous but nonetheless individuated “handles” – are potentially actionable utterances. That’s the reason why so many operators of such sites as this one engage moderation of one sort or another, and take it upon themselves to edit or censor their readers’ comments. Even a blog operator can be held responsible for this limited use of such an asset; how much more so the employer whose employee is taken to speak “officially” by way of a company or agency e-mail address?

To continue from johanna:

Then, he assumes that the USA is the world, conveniently forgetting that not only has the password been given to people in several countries, but that US law does not apply in the UK.

Even were I a lawyer (contrary to johanna‘s burbles, I’m not; I’m simply a representative of one of the Plaintiff’s Bar’s prime prey species), I wouldn’t bet money on the extent to which U.S. law presently runs in the U.K. or might run a week from tomorrow – and run ex post facto in the bargain. “No man is safe in his life, his liberty, and his property while the legislature is in session,” and that goes doubled and squared with our Assassin-in-Chief squatting behind the Resolute desk.

But that notwithstanding, those who had conducted correspondences with the C.R.U. cabal complicit in the massive international anthropogenic global climate catastrophe fraud are no more entitled to special privileges of privacy in those exchanges than is the pharmacist in his records of whatever prescriptions he may have filled for Adam Lanza in the months and years leading up to 14 December 2012.

If an e-mail got onto the C.R.U. server in any way – even if it had been simply forwarded from a recipient without the originator’s knowledge – no presumption of privacy could prevent it from being swept up in discovery incidental to a criminal investigation, a civil suit, or a citizen’s demand under the controlling statutes we refer to as Freedom of Information Acts. When it comes to actions at law seeking disclosure, there’s no more real presumption of privacy in occupation-related e-mails than there is in a doctor’s or a lawyer’s or an accountant’s client records.

That’s the reason why such professionals are taught to exercise circumspection in such recordkeeping, and why we’re subject to continuing professional education in the forensic aspects of our practices (including “risk mitigation”).

The climate charlatans of the C.R.U. weren’t so cautioned? Or didn’t have enough common sense to think it out for themselves? Well, neither did Enron’s “smartest guys in the room,” did they?

And Enron’s people didn’t get to redact or withhold their e-mails from review, struggle and squirm though they certainly did.

Then we get johanna descending into rank stupidity, fantasy, and personal insult:

We then get a few paragraphs of bloviating “I am a lawyer from the US and I have huge testicles – I can get anything I want, anywhere”. Hilarious. People in other countries, including the relevant jurisdiction, the UK, just giggle at this Elmer Fudd figure.

Elmer Fudd, your fantasies about ‘discovery’ in other jurisdictions (where no doubt you play the crusading attorney) are absolutely irrelevant. What’s more, unless they are considered relevant to the case, emails about picking up the kids from school etc are routinely excluded from discovery.

If you are a lawyer, I would avoid briefing you. Lots of “mine is bigger than yours”, but not much in the way of research or judgement.

As I’d said, I’m not a lawyer. What I’ve written regarding these all.7z e-mails is predicated upon what is effectively universal in corporate and government policy regarding official e-mail accounts for reasons I’ve stipulated (and which, as mentioned above,johanna has failed to address, despite her claim of having “helped to write” such policies, and the Great Spider only knows what a bollix she’d made of whatever she’d touched).

As for the matter of discovery in a suit at law, it may with some reliability be concluded that johanna has never been subjected to that process as a defendant in any such action, therefore having not the least goddam idea what a plaintiff’s attorney can and will demand, subpoena duces tecum.

And the worst I wish the snarking, pointless johanna is that her eye may be opened by experience.

I know why FOIA released the password! He found out that WUWT was coming up on 1.000.000 posts and wanted to distract everyone so no one kept count until it was past! /sarc

Really, people, no need to try and determine who FOIA is, because let’s be honest, people have been trying to determine that for years with no luck. The message has been scrubbed sufficiently that I doubt any writing analyst could determine who was the originator, even if we had sufficient copies of written material from a potential candidate to do such an analysis.

As for the general release of the emails, I can wait. While I have a copy of each FOIA release so far, I haven’t been able to go through everything contained in the first release, let alone really look at the second. I have no problem letting people I trust do most of the slog work.

Yes, everyone loves a puzzle and all the more if we have an audience to see how clever we are ;) However, I believe we owe it to FOIA to avoid using this mystery to boost our own egos and allow him every chance to remain anonymous. Let’s choose not to speculate further.

Clearly, FOIA is someone who had access to the files and server shortly before Copenhagen. He said so himself:

It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.

That narrows down who FOIA is, doesn’t it? WE may not know that small group is, but someone does.

I am not giving anything away here, because he said this himself.

I said it before (in my only post here): CG1 was in and of itself a tipping point. Copenhagen’s failure was a combination of two things – CG1 and the fact that the rich countries (including China and India) were never, ever going to sign on to give away the farm the way the have-nots were asking and Kyoto demanded. When it was found out that the haves were convening their own special conference, the others had a conniption fit. CG1 set the stage, certainly. People have never accepted the warmists tripe the same way since. Governments almost immediately cooled to the whole thing, and the warmists have never sine had the stage to themselves the way they did pre-Copenhagen.

Yeah, FOIA is a hero to us all – and should also be a hero to all the poor of the world. But they will never know what he did for them.

This time, on this subject the Good Guys turned out to be wearing the black hats. And the “deniers” turned out to be wearing the white hats. But for all Steve and Anthony were doing (with a whole lotta lovin’ here and at CA from all of us), NONE of it made a dent. Not until FOIA came along. WE knew they were doing fraudulent science, but dammit if anyone else did.

It all came down to “hide the decline.” It really did. Mann shot his own foot clean off. Since then his bullying has had 75-90% less effect. It couldn’t happen to a nicer cabron.

I had been praying for some insider to wake up and blow that whistle. I had no idea it would actually happen. But I was hoping SOME insider had the stones and the principles. His science, after all, had been hijacked by Mann et al. He SHOULD have been pissed. All of them who weren’t Hockey Team members should have been.

Clearly, FOIA is someone who had access to the files and server shortly before Copenhagen. He said so himself:

It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.

That narrows down who FOIA is, doesn’t it? WE may not know that small group is, but someone does.

I am not giving anything away here, because he said this himself.

I said it before (in my only post here): CG1 was in and of itself a tipping point. Copenhagen’s failure was a combination of two things – CG1 and the fact that the rich countries (including China and India) were never, ever going to sign on to give away the farm the way the have-nots were asking and Kyoto demanded. When it was found out that the haves were convening their own special conference, the others had a conniption fit. CG1 set the stage, certainly. People have never accepted the warmists tripe the same way since. Governments almost immediately cooled to the whole thing, and the warmists have never sine had the stage to themselves the way they did pre-Copenhagen.

Yeah, FOIA is a hero to us all – and should also be a hero to all the poor of the world. But they will never know what he did for them.

This time, on this subject the Good Guys turned out to be wearing the black hats. And the “deniers” turned out to be wearing the white hats. But for all Steve and Anthony were doing (with a whole lotta lovin’ here and at CA from all of us), NONE of it made a dent. Not until FOIA came along. WE knew they were doing fraudulent science, but dammit if anyone else did.

It all came down to “hide the decline.” It really did. Mann shot his own foot clean off. Scine then his bullying has had 75-90% less effect. It couldn’t happen to a nicer cabron.

I had been praying for some insider to wake up and blow that whistle. I had no idea it would actually happen. But I was hoping SOME insider had the stones and the principles. His science, after all, had been hijacked by Mann et al. He SHOULD have been pissed. All of them who weren’t Hockey Team members should have been.

Wait a minute, you just quoted Mann as “Its (sic) hard to imagine what sort of comparison wouldn’t be deceptive.” but you have just lifted that from a paragraph as though it were a separate statement. Clearly, Mann is not actually saying that what he did was deceptive. He is saying that *if* showing the full spread is deceptive, *then*…

It’s a bit like me explaining something to you by starting out: “Imagine that I killed somebody, then the police would have…” and you going right ahead and claiming that I said “I killed somebody”. Tut, tut. Not good.

Update 6:
“I’m not saying that these things necessarily cancel out
> (after all, there is an interesting and perhaps somewhat disturbing
> compensation between indirect aerosol forcing and sensitivity across
> the CMIP3 models that defies the assumption of independence), but if
> showing the full spread from CMIP3 is deceptive, its hard to imagine
> what sort of comparison wouldn’t be deceptive (your point re MAGICC
> notwithstanding),”

Jimi Bostock I have to agree with the many comments that call for an end to speculation on the identity of FOIA. I can’t see what the benefit is in that activity.

All FOIA need do, to bring about a storm of press scrutiny on the corruption of climate science … is to reveal their identity.

We only need look at the press interest in Julian La-strange, to realise the MSM love a story like this. There would be a storm of media interest. All the events leading up to Climategate and after would be re-examined. We would finally get press scrutiny of the “inquiries” which I can only describe as criminally corrupt and an insult to real science.

It would bring press interest back to an issue which those in authority hoped could be quietly forgotten; it would bring scrutiny to the ridiculous climate policies which have undermined the western economy and cost us all so much, and it would force the scientific elite to face up to the fact that they were entirely wrong to back the climategate fraudsters and that we sceptics have always been entirely right to be sceptical of their non-science..

The only thing keeping this blood-sucking vampire of the carbon industry afloat is the lack of sunlight to expose their corruption. FOIA has the power in their hands to bring in that light!

Re. the updates 4, 5, 6. These are the things that matter, not speculation on FOIA’s identity.

Could I suggest a short specific post on each of these? Packaging like that is what will get out into the wider blogosphere. Also repeat a standard keyword, like “Climategate 3” for Google, etc. and thus into the MSM.

Left leaning people always believe that the good of the collective trumps the needs of the individual. Right-leaning people believe that individual rights are paramount.

—————————————————————————————————————————-
Unfortunately, you’ll find that what many “right-leaning” people believe is that THEIR individual rights are paramount. It has to be so because you’ll find that the rights of two individuals will often conflict with each other or, more often, the rights of one may conflict with the needs of another. Which leads inevitably to an attitude of “I’m alright, Jack” if rights are paramount.

One further word on the release / not release issue. Let’s imagine for a minute that somewhere in those emails Mann digs up some dirt he’s found on Anthony (or Jo Nova, or Tallbloke, or…) that’s SO embarassing that even the Team decide it would be unethical to use – I’m not suggesting for a second that there IS such dirt, but you never know!

johanna says: I wonder if those who want to provide all the emails to everyone who wants to read them would feel the same if details of every email exchange they were ever involved in (including as a passive recipient of a copy) was circulated around the globe?

That is a none argument. The UK law required the UEA to release its emails, It flagrantly breached that law. It had a duty of care to those in the emails and it broke that duty of care by forcing the release of those email through the whistleblower root.

The FOI law is there to protect the innocent and it is the duty of the UEA to comply with that law and safely release these emails not some private individuals.

However, the UEA, the Royal Society, Parliament, Muir Russel and Oxburgh have all colluded & conspired to justice and prevented that law working in the way it was intended They conspired to prevent the FOI protecting the innocent.

FOIA was given no choice. We all expected Climategate to force a root and branch review of climate science, to out the rogues and bring back faith that the system works. FOIA gave these scoundrels many years to sort out their mess. But has a single person involved lost their job? Have they been reprimanded demoted or anything? No! Has the UEA which was the one which clearly broke the law been allowed to continue to say it was “vindicated”?

In other words, they have continued to say black is white that snow=warming, no warming=warming, etc. all because it suited certain politicians to allow eco-zealots to continue to poison the evidential base we rely on to assess climate variation.

In short, if I were a public employee, if I broke the law or saw colleagues doing so, if I then kept quiet and said nothing as the law breaking was covered up by fraud and deceit. If I knew what we know they knew …. I would have no right whatsoever to expect any privacy because I WOULD BE COMPLICIT IN THE CRIME.

I don’t know if every company has an internet policy but if they don’t then they certainly should. There have been several cases in recent years where companies w/o policies have been punished by the courts for the libel of their employees committed using the co’s network. Cetainly, when I was at work there was a written and unwritten policy for both email and internet use. Email were always said to be the property of the company and internet policy was usually ‘no porn’.

And to those who think we owe warmist any duty to protect their private information. Can I remind you just how they all cried out for more when Gleick fraudulently and illegally and intentionally released personal details from the Heartland institute … not with the intention of doing revealing any wrongdoing just as the UEA lawbreaking …. but through pure spite and intending to damage them.

And let no one here imagine that if any of our emails got into the hands of the “warmists” that they would have absolutely no scruples at all revealing them to the public. The only thing that would stop them is that they would have to remove everything which shows us to be honest individuals who are right about the science …. which probably leaves nothing but personal “scandal” … like the odd over-due library books.

I actually believe that it doesn’t really matter who FOIA is. I like to think that he/she is all of us in a way. I like to think there are many people in the world whose integrity would demand we folllow a similar path when the enormity of the transgression of reason becomes apparent. Most of us chose to lie low but not this character. You have to ask yourself why. You have to be impressed.

And by the way joanna, I KNOW the average workplace email of any personal description would hasn’t cost us all BILLIONS of dollars in wasted and fraudulent science, money that was hard earned by all of us. I don’t give a stuff what comes out if the whiff of a crime is evident. Ask your average copper if they discount evidence if breach of privacy is possible.

They (alarmists) are in general manipulative, secretive, protective and unresponsive. Same as any other power organisation. The problem is that no matter how many emails or letters get into the public domain it will not make any difference until we have goverment officials that are capable of questioning the science rather than being gullible cash cows. In order for this to happen we will probably have to wait until 2050 or so when we will see that temperatures, sea levels etc… are nowhere near what is being proclaimed. The statues of Mann et al will be pulled down and dragged through the streets and we can then actually start focusing and directing funds to proper projects, such as studying natural weather cyclitic behaviour.

In response to mpaul‘s correct assertion at 6:51 PM on 14 March to the effect that:

Left leaning people always believe that the good of the collective trumps the needs of the individual. Right-leaning people believe that individual rights are paramount.

…we have at 2:18 AM on 15 March Joe writing:

Unfortunately, you’ll find that what many “right-leaning” people believe is that THEIR individual rights are paramount. It has to be so because you’ll find that the rights of two individuals will often conflict with each other or, more often, the rights of one may conflict with the needs of another. Which leads inevitably to an attitude of “I’m alright, Jack” if rights are paramount.

This is entirely wrong. Joe fails to understand the nature of rights, this being demonstrated by his assumption that it is possible for “the rights of two individuals […] to conflict with each other.”

It is the nature of rights – both negative and positive – that they define what is moral in human affairs, and cannot conflict. At most, there can be confusion as to who has the right of the matter in a particular situation, but there’s never even a pretense at reasonable debate when it comes to individual rights, which not only are paramount but must be paramount if human beings are to live in each others’ company.

As for the alleged “needs of another” conflicting with the rights of the individual, there’s the deadly premise of the leftist, the socialist, the collectivist, the statist, who proposes (and undertakes) aggressive violation of the unalienable rights of certain people on the grounds that by doing so the leftist has satisfied the “needs” of someone else.

This way lies the dissolution of social comity – for no one can henceforth tolerate the existence of other people who might claim some kind of “need” for one’s services or property – and the end of good civil order as government action becomes aimed at what economist Frédéric Bastiat characterized as “legal plunder.”

Rights are indivisible. Negative rights are unalienable, and all positive rights derive therefrom.

What Joe condemns as “an attitude of ‘I’m alright, Jack'” is nothing more than human beings going peaceably about their affairs – without harming anybody else – “every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid….”